Sports
The Hackensack High School Comets now compete in the Big North Conference, following a reorganization of sports leagues in Northern New Jersey by the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA). With 1,225 students in grades 10-12, the school was classified by the NJSIAA in the 2011-12 school year for most sports as North I, Group IV, which included schools with enrollment of 1,120 to 2,479. In the 2009-10 school year the school's athletic teams competed in the North Jersey Tri-County Conference, a conference established on an interim basis to facilitate realignment. Hackensack had been a founding member of the Northern New Jersey Interscholastic League. Hackensack High and Ridgewood High School were the only founding members of the NNJIL to remain in the league, though Hackensack was the only school to remain continuously in the league. Since the 1912 visit of Halley's Comet, Hackensack's athletic teams have been known as the Comets ("Colts" before 1912).
On February 6, 1925, the Hackensack Comets Boys Basketball team won 39-35 against the Passaic High School, ending that school's 159-game winning streak. The ball commemorating this feat still remains in the trophy case in the gym named for that team's captain, Howard Bollerman, Sr. (later principal of Hackensack High School).
The football team won the North I Group IV state sectional championships in 1992-1996, 1999 and 2000. The HHS homecoming football game has been held annually on Thanksgiving Day against rival Teaneck High School since 1931, alternating each year with each school as host.
Vince Lombardi was offered $6,000 to coach football at Hackensack High School, but couldn't get out of his contract with neighboring St. Cecilia's in Englewood, New Jersey. Hackensack turned to Tom DellaTorre to coach the football team, he responded by winning 13 championships. DellaTorre later served as the schools athletic director. Upon his retirement in the early 1980s the football field was renamed "Tom DellaTorre Athletic Field".
The school won a share of the 2010 Group IV outdoor track and field title after East Brunswick High School tied Hackensack in the final event, marking the program's first state title since 1971, when they shared a Group IV title after a tie with Henry Snyder High School.
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Famous quotes containing the word sports:
“Come, my Celia, let us prove
While we may the sports of love;
Time will not be ours forever,
He at length our good will sever.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
“In the end, I think you really only get as far as you’re allowed to get.”
—Gayle Gardner, U.S. sports reporter. As quoted in Sports Illustrated, p. 87 (June 17, 1991)
“It was so hard to pry this door open, and if I mess up I know the people behind me are going to have it that much harder. Because then there’s living proof. They can sit around and say, “See? It doesn’t work.” I don’t want to be their living proof.”
—Gayle Gardner, U.S. sports reporter. As quoted in Sports Illustrated, p. 87 (June 17, 1991)