Joe Hofmann Notebook: Trivia Time!

Everyone loves a good trivia question. It gets the brain thinking. It brings back the memories. It can bring a smile back to your face … or maybe a bad memory, if you’re on the losing end of the trivia question.

Over the last five weeks, I have delved into some of the Morris-Sussex area’s most fascinating postseasons. Some of them ended with a thud for the locals, while others ended with a crescendo of thrills and suspense. 

I hope you have been reading. More important, I hope you have been taking notes.

Now comes your final exam! Have you been paying attention, class? Some of the questions I posed as I wrote this way back in Week 1.

OK, take out your No. 2 pencils.

Answers are below (no peeking)!.

1. Name a three-time sectional champion from Morris who lost to a Morris school while bidding for a fourth straight crown.

2. Perhaps no team has pumped out great QBs like Randolph, but which Rams QB threw four INTs in one sectional final game – but managed to throw a TD pass to put his team ahead in the fourth quarter? Hint: He is arguably the best the school has ever produced.

3. Which Sussex QB led his high school team to a wild sectional championship game victory and then coached a Morris team to one of the most unlikely sectional championships about 20 years later?

4. When was Pope John’s last sectional championship?

5. These two schools ended a two-year state championship drought for Morris-Sussex County schools (the longest drought the two counties combined have ever had). 

6. The SCIL answer to question No. 5 had a coach who had the most bizarre beginning to any coaching career I have ever heard of (and no doubt will ever hear!). Who was the coach and where did he start his career?

7. This Morris school has posted two winning streaks of over 30 games down through the ages. What is the school? 

8. Who were the two coaches at that Morris school?

9. Everyone knows that Stewart Winston’s touchdown run in double OT led Morristown to an epic 6-0 victory over West Morris to win a sectional title in 1997. But a Colonial defender blocked West Morris’ Kris Grundy’s 21-yard chip shot in the fourth quarter. Who was the kid who blocked it?

10. Butler QB Scott Brown set the state touchdown pass record (since broken) with 39 in 1997. Whose record did Brown break?

11. Who was Brown’s favorite receiver? 

12. Sparta finished third in the late, great Skyline Conference in 1976 but crushed Tenafly to win its first-ever sectional title. Who beat the Spartans that year in the regular season?

13. Pope John had to forfeit three games in 1994 and finished under .500 because of those losses. Coach Vic Paternostro’s Lions rebounded the next year and won a Parochial Group II title the following year over which school? Hint: It was a revenge match of sorts.

14. Sparta had one of the best offenses Morris-Sussex has ever seen for coach Frank Marchiano in 2014. Sparta won 11 straight games that year but lost its opener. Who beat Sparta?

15. What Morris team was under .500 but wound up winning a sectional title?

16. Madison has won most of its sectional championships with Ted Monica or Chris Kubik as its coach, but there was a third coach who guided the Dodgers to a title. Name the coach.

17. Wallkill beat Lenape Valley at Giants Stadium in 1994. Coach John Pew had a nickname for his defense … what was that nickname?

18. Morris Hills beat mighty P-Burg to win a section in 1975 … and had a sack to clinch the game in the finals seconds. Who had the sack heard around the world?

19. This coach won two sectional championships with two different Morris teams. Who is he?

20. What two brothers have quarterbacked a team to a combined three sectional champions?

21. What area coach didn’t permit his team to practice at Giants Stadium or MetLife leading up to a sectional championship game? 

22. Has a Morris team ever had a four-game losing streak the year they won a sectional championship? 

23. How many teams have Morris-Sussex schools defeated that are no longer open? I counted six.

24. Have two Sussex teams ever faced off in a sectional final? Yup, three times, in fact. Who? When?

25. What Sussex school played the same Bergen school three straight seasons for a sectional championship? The Sussex team finished 2-1 in those games. All three games were epic. And the better team lost each game, the coach of the Sussex team once told me.

26. Who was the final SCIL team to have played a game? 

27. Which were the two Morris teams to have played the final high school game at Giants Stadium? 

28. Which was the first Morris high school team to have played at MetLife?

29. Which two Morris teams won a section with their backup QB (Hint: One of them won it with their third-string QB)!

30. Which Morris sectional champion had THREE 1,000-yard rushers in the same season?

31. Which two schools had a four-year varsity QB lead the team to a sectional championship? (Hint: One led his team to the title as a freshman, the other as a senior.)

32. One year, two Morris teams faced one another in the state finals and it was the only game in the entire state … what was the year and who were the two teams? Extra credit: What happened?

33. Two nights later, a Sussex school played at Mount Olive and handily won a state championship. Who was the team? 

34. Which program reached the sectional finals nine straight years (They won five straight titles and then lost four straight sectional championship games during that streak).

35. Which Morris-Sussex teams have never won a state championship?

Extra credit I: Who was the only freshman QB to guide his team to a sectional championship?

Extra credit II: Which team went winless the year after reaching a sectional final? 

Extra credit III: Why did Jimm Kramer spell his first name with an extra ‘M’?

ANSWERS

1. Madison won three straight sectional crowns from 1977-79 but lost in the 1980 final to Whippany Park.

2. Matt Nardolillo was one of the best QBs for a Randolph program which pumped out many greats over the years, but he struggled in a 12-7 sectional final win over Summit. Nardolillo, who’d go on to play at Penn State, threw four INTs but completed a TD pass to Dan Bierals to put Randolph ahead for good in the fourth quarter. He also rushed for 98 yards. 

3. QB Jerry Venturino led his Hopatcong team to a wild sectional title comeback win over Mahwah in 2001 and then coached Jefferson to an unlikely crown in 2021.

4. Pope John’s last sectional championship came in 2002 when the Lion2s beat Queen of Peace (Lyndhurst), 41-12, in Parochial Group II.

5. Mountain Lakes (Giants Stadium) and Jefferson (Rutgers) won sectional crowns on the same night in 2008. Morris (and Sussex) came away empty, sectional championship-wise, in 2006 and 2007. 

6. Jefferson’s Joe Mattessich began his coaching career at the Bergen County Juvenile Detention Center and was discovered there by a Bergen County coach named Babe Mongilia. Mattessich went on to coach as an assistant at such schools as Palisades Park and Cliffside Park before coming out this way, where he coached at Jefferson, West Milford, and Vernon. He brought home a state championship in 2008, the school’s first since the John Cinotti Era in the late 1980s.   

7. Madison won at least 30 straight games two different times.

8. The coaches were Ted Monica (1970s) and Chris Kubik (2000s).

9. Morristown’s Jeff Dirmann blocked Grundy’s kick in the fourth quarter to keep the Wolfpack off the scoreboard in a sectional championship game that would go two OTs. 

10. Brown broke the previous record held by teammate Dan Madine, set one year earlier.

11. Brown’s favorite receiver was Mike O’Brien, who caught 111 passes and accumulated 1,689 yards receiving in 1997.

12. The Spartans lost to Butler and DePaul in the regular season that year.

13. The Lions traveled to Bayonne and beat Marist, 20-15. The win was especially sweet for Paternostro’s team, which had to sit back and watch Marist win the title in its absence one year earlier.

14. Sparta lost a 24-21 decision to Roxbury in its season-opening game before pretty much running through the rest of its schedule on the way to beating River Dell in the sectional finals at MetLife, 31-23.

15. West Morris was 4-5 heading into the playoffs in 2023 but beat Pascack Valley, Sparta, and Old Tappan in the playoffs to win North 2, Group III.

16. Milt Theodosatos guided Madison to a crown in 1998.

17. Pew nicknamed the Rangers D the Smurfs … the team didn’t have a single defender over six feet tall.

18. Morris Hills defender Duane Fredericks sacked PBurg QB Mike Stocker as the game clock ran out and the Scarlet Knights won a thriller, 7-0.

19. Cosmo Lorusso won a pair of sectional titles at Pequannock (1999-2000) and Roxbury (2009, 2012)

20. Butler won a 2018 sectional championship with Evan Smith at the controls and won in 2024-2025 with his little brother David at quarterback.  

21. Bill Regan would not allow Morris Knolls to practice at Giants Stadium or MetLife. “You can only let the genie out of the bottle one time,” he once told me. His thinking sure worked for his team: Knolls was 4-0 in state finals held in East Rutherford.

22. Jefferson did that in 2021– and Jerry Venturino’s Falcons managed to somehow get it together in time to beat Rutherford to win the section, 28-7.   

23. There are six schools defeated by Morris-Sussex schools in sectional finals that are no longer open. They are Clifford Scott (beaten by Mountain Lakes in 1975), and Immaculate, Marist, Queen of Peace, Bayley-Ellard and St. Cecelia (all beaten by Pope John).

24. Hopatcong beat Sparta in 2005, Wallkill beat Lenape in 1994, and Kittatinny beat Newton in 2018.

25. In what became an intense, terrific rivalry, Lenape Valley played Lodi three straight times from 1990-92. Lenape won the first two, Lodi won the last one.

26. The final SCIL school to have ever played a game was … Jefferson in 2008 when the Falcons won their section at Rutgers. The NJAC started in 2009.

27. The last two high school teams to have played at Giants Stadium were … Mountain Lakes and Butler. The Herd overwhelmed the Bulldogs, 48-7.

28. The first Morris high school team to have played at MetLife was … Mountain Lakes, which lost to Wallington, 23-21.

29. Randolph won it over Morris Hills  in 1989 with running back-turned-QB Tony Williams running the attack. The Rams beat Morris Hills in a battle of two undefeated Morris teams. Jefferson won it in 2021 as Pete Delaportas (Pope John transfer) was sidelined with an injury in the first quarter. Erik Garv, the starter the previous year and third-stringer in 2021, played a great game in a win over Rutherford in the final.

30. Boonton beat Cedar Grove to win North 2, Group I and had an incredible three backs with over 1,000 yards in Corey Dempster (1,621 yards, 22 TDs), Jordan DeCosta (1,200 yards, 14 TDs) and QB Danny Portis (1,026 yards, 14 TDs) Boonton was 545 for 4,762 yards and 58 TDs that year. WOW!!

31. Morris Hills and Par Hills, to my knowledge, are the two schools that had a four-year QB lead them to a sectional final. Daymon Fleming started as a freshman at Morris Hills and led coach Mike Sabo’s Scarlet Knights to a title in 2018. Par Hills’ freshman Nick Verducci helped lead Dave Albano’s Vikings to a title over Cranford in 2014.

32. Mount Olive beat Jefferson for the North 2, Group III championship in 2002 – the only game contested in all of New Jersey that night. The day before, a blizzard forced the postponement of all the state finals. But the good folks of Mount Olive spent the entire day preparing the field and Jimm Kramer’s Marauders beat Jim Matsakis’ Falcons, 14-13. 

33. Pope John overwhelmed Queen of Peace to win the Parochial Group II championship at Mount Olive. Pope John’s field was buried in snow from a blizzard!

34. Randolph reached the sectional finals every year from 1986-1993 – an incredible nine straight years. They won five straight from 1986-1990 and then lost in the finals four straight times.

35. The schools who have never won a sectional championship are High Point, Montville, Morris Catholic, Mo-Beard, Parsippany, Sussex Tech and Vernon.

Extra credit I: Par Hills freshman QB Nick Verducci threw a TD pass and rushed for another score for coach Dave Albano as the Vikings won the first sectional title in school history. Verducci wound up being the QB on Hofmann’s All-Quarter Century for Big State, which ran last summer.

Extra credit II: Randolph lost in the 1994 final and then went winless the following season.

Extra credit III (not found in any part of the 5-part series): Kramer once told me that he wanted to extinguish himself with a college professor in a class that had dozens of kids, many of them named “Jim.” There was only one Jimm – Kramer!