East Brunswick, New Jersey Coach Steps Down (Coach Supported Pregame Prayer)
Home News Tribune ^ | October 9, 2005 | Greg Tufaro
Controversy erupts over pregame prayer: Parents allege East Brunswick football coach Marcus Borden violated federal laws protecting separation of church and state in public schools by initiating prayers
Home News Tribune Online 10/9/05
By GREG TUFARO - STAFF WRITER
gtufaro@eastbrun.gannett.com
EAST BRUNSWICK — East Brunswick High School football coach Marcus Borden resigned in protest yesterday after school officials told the national-award-winning mentor he could no longer initiate or participate in team prayer.
Offered no explanation for Borden's absence, confused players took the field against Sayreville on Friday night without their veteran head coach of 23 years. Borden opted to forgo the game hours after being called into schools Superintendent Jo Ann Magistro's office.
"There was a meeting with Marcus because it had come to the superintendent's attention that there was prayer going on at (pregame activities)," said Trish LaDuca, a spokesperson for the district.
Magistro received Borden's letter of resignation, initially sent to East Brunswick Athletics Director Frank Noppenberger, via e-mail yesterday. Offensive coordinator Glen Pazinko will replace Borden on an interim basis.
Early last week, parents of several students told Magistro that Borden violated federal laws protecting the separation of church and state in public schools by initiating
prayer at pregame meals and in the locker room before opening kickoffs.
Nancy Halupka, president of the Quarterback Club, East Brunswick's football booster organization, said the parents who contacted Magistro do not have sons on the football team.
LaDuca would not divulge the names or affiliation of those who complained but said, "It was definitely more than one. The number . . . I don't know. But it wasn't one individual and it wasn't just from one group, either."
LaDuca said the district unequivocally supports the students' First Amendment right to pray.
"Certainly students have a constitutional right to engage in prayer on school property, at a school event and even during the course of the school day," LaDuca said. "(But) it has to be student-initiated.
"A representative of the school district cannot constitutionally initiate prayer, encourage it or lead it. Representatives of the school cannot participate in the student-initiated prayer."
Monica Simons, communications director for the Quarterback Club, said school officials thwarted the attempts of players to say grace on their own as a team during Friday's pregame meal.
LaDuca did not return a specific message left on her cell phone yesterday trying to corroborate Simons' story.
"Our sons' constitutional right was taken away," said Simons, who helps prepare and serve pregame meals. "They wanted to pray and they were told not to, to sit down. As you can imagine, we were all up in arms."
Yesterday, about 50 members of the East Brunswick football team, wearing their green-and-white jerseys, gathered at the high school parking lot in a show of solidarity. In dramatic fashion, a caravan of cars paraded to Borden's South River home. Once there, players stood outside his house in the pouring rain, chanting Borden's name and imploring their coach to return.
Borden opened the front door to engage team captains Mike Franchino and Dan Acciani in a brief conversation.
"He just said he's a man of his word and that we have to talk to the superintendent if we want to get anything changed," said Franchino, a senior running back. "It's unfortunate, but we really want him back and it's hard for us to do anything now."
Simons said she will ask Magistro to hold an emergency session of the Board of Education either tomorrow or Tuesday evening. Acciani said he expects the entire team to attend that meeting, if called, on Borden's behalf.
"We're a family," Acciani said, "and whatever coach says, we are going to stand by him."
Simons said if Borden does not return, she believes at least half the players will quit, leaving East Brunswick unable to field a varsity team for the remainder of the season. East Brunswick has a 2-3 record with four regular-season games remaining.
Reached by telephone yesterday, Borden, a tenured Spanish teacher at the high school and owner of a 116-100-1 career mark — including last year's Central Jersey Group IV championship — declined comment.
Founder of the Snapple Bowl, a charity high school All-Star football game that has raised more than $150,000 for physically and mentally impaired children, Borden was named USA Today magazine's 2003 national Caring Coach of the Year. He is the Home News Tribune's reigning Coach of the Year.
News of Borden's resignation and the circumstances surrounding it had a rippling effect across Central Jersey, where many high school football coaches engage in forms of nonsectarian team prayer, such as that practiced in East Brunswick.
After hearing of the controversy, Old Bridge football coach Bob DeMarco said yesterday he will no longer lead a team prayer.
"We've done it through the years," said DeMarco, now in his 29th season. "We just bow our heads and ask that we play to the best of our ability, keep ourselves and our opponents free from unjury.
"I understand what the rules and regulations are as far as that's concerned, so it's a tough one. I've always been concerned with it."
Spotswood coach Ron Raymond previously coached at Cardinal McCarrick, a parochial school where prayer is encouraged. He said Spotswood players will continue to pray before games as long as he is their coach.
"We do a generic prayer where one of the kids will just kind of say a general thing about being blessed," Raymond said. "It's nothing specific. I'm involved with it, but I usually let the kids do it."
Teams that pray usually do so in the locker room. However, veteran Brick Township football coach Warren Wolf has led team prayers on the playing field, in plain view of spectators.
"As far as a full-fledged prayer, I don't think we would call it that," Brick Township Athletics Director Bill Bruno said. "I think it would probably be more of a pregame ritual where coach would say a few words for protection of the Lord above that no one gets hurt or injured during the course of the game."
Jim Loper, associate director of the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association, which governs high school sports in the state, said his organization has no jurisdiction over team prayer at public schools.
"It's a local issue," he said. "We have no position on it as a matter of speaking. Some schools do it. It's one of those things that's never a problem until it's a problem."
Three historical court rulings have impacted the issue of team prayer, according to Rob Boston, assistant director of communications for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, a Washington-based watchdog group.
In 1989, the 11th Circuit Court supported a lower court ruling that found pregame invocations by coaches, officials or students at high school football games were unconstitutional.
In 1992, a federal appeals court ruled that student-led prayers that are nonsectarian and nonproselytizing can be permitted at graduations, but not before football games, which the court deemed not serious enough to be solemnized by prayer.
In 1995, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit found that informal student-initiated, student-led prayers at sporting events were constitutional. The court found that students may voluntarily pray together, provided such prayer is not done with school participation or supervision.
"If a student wants to say a prayer in school, he or she can do that," Boston said. "The same practice is now being extended to football games. If some of the players want to get together before the game to have a prayer, that's fine. If you don't want to participate, don't participate."
Boston said his organization has fielded several complaints nationwide from high school football players who felt uncomfortable praying as part of a team.
"Some players feel that, if they don't take part in the prayer or they don't share the coach's religion, they might not get to play that day, they might somehow be disfavored or somehow excluded," Boston said.
Halupka said she wants East Brunswick players to continue to pray at team meals and before games.
"I don't want the privilege taken away from our boys," she said. "I sympathize with coach (Borden) because it's a 30-year tradition. It started long before he even came to East Brunswick. It's something that the boys do on their own every week after he initiates it the first week."
Coach Frank Zarro of John P. Stevens High School in Edison expressed regret over the decision by Borden, past president of the New Jersey Football Coaches Association, to step down.
"I can't imagine Middlesex County football without Marcus being involved in some way," Zarro said. "Whenever there was anybody that had to step up and do something, Marcus was always the first one to volunteer and do it. He wasn't one of those guys who would just talk about things.
"To lose somebody like him, who loves the game, it's a shame. This is terrible."
Greg Tufaro: (732) 565-7289; gtufaro@thnt.com |
