Phil Anastasia: Olympic Conference marks 50 years

On the afternoon of May 16, 1959, a small group of athletic directors, track coaches, and officials gathered behind Glassboro High School on Delsea Drive.

Their new athletic conference wasn't making history.

History was making their new athletic conference.

It was a championship track meet, the "soft launch" of an organization known as the Olympic Conference. It was a boys-only competition featuring six schools, five of which had been opened in the previous two years.

But it was a defining moment in the history of South Jersey sports. It would be repeated, too.

"Everything was new," said Roger Cassi, who was the athletic director at Williamstown High School at the time. "Everybody was establishing their own identity."

The Olympic Conference will commemorate its 50th anniversary at its championship track meet Wednesday at Pennsauken. Some of the original founding members are expected to attend ceremonies to celebrate a half-century of commitment to high school sports.

The conference today is a sprawling organization of 19 members that includes private schools such as Bishop Eustace Prep, Camden Catholic, and Paul VI, newer Burlington County schools such as Seneca, vocational schools such as Camden County Tech, and older Camden County schools such as Camden and Woodrow Wilson.

But from the beginning, the Olympic Conference has been reflective of South Jersey. While the Colonial Conference echoes tradition and constancy, the Olympic Conference has always been a symbol of growth, change, and progress.

That was true at the start, as officials from Williamstown, Triton, Deptford, Edgewood, Delaware Township (which soon would be known as Cherry Hill West), and Glassboro laid the groundwork for the new conference.

The men met at Edgewood athletic director Bob Zardus' house. Delaware Township athletic director Bill McFadden came up with the idea of calling the new organization "The Olympic Conference."

And everybody had the sense that their new schools and their new conference were part of the changes sweeping across South Jersey, and across America.

"In the late 1940s and early 1950s, you could drive out of Camden on Mount Ephraim Avenue, which turned into the Black Horse Pike, and go all the way to the Shore and the first time you'd go through a town with a high school was when you reached Pleasantville," said Harry Beaudet, a basketball coach and later athletic director at Triton in the early years of the Olympic Conference. "But things started to change in the late 1950s."

That was the genesis of the Olympic Conference. Williamstown, Edgewood, Delaware Township, Deptford, and Triton all opened in the late 1950s. They needed an athletic conference.

"Triton wanted to get in the Colonial and couldn't," said Ben Lynch, who was Triton's baseball and basketball coach at the school's opening. "We had to try to find games, and these other new schools were in the same boat."

As South Jersey grew, so did the Olympic Conference. New schools such as Sterling, Eastern, Clearview, Washington Township, Gateway, and West Deptford soon joined the conference.

Some have stayed. Some have gone. Some have left and returned. Of the original six, only Triton and Edgewood (now Winslow Township) have been part of the conference for all 50 years.

"Back in those days, Route 73 was a two-lane cow path," said Carl Rickershauser, a coach at Edgewood in the early years of the Olympic Conference. "But the people were so excited to have their own high school."

Through the years, the Olympic Conference has altered size and shape, always reflective of greater trends in South Jersey.

The relatively recent addition of the Lenape district schools - Shawnee, Lenape, Cherokee, and Seneca - was indicative of the burgeoning growth of that area of Burlington County. The planned 2010 launch of a football super-conference, anchored by Burlco Olympic programs, was fueled in part by the massive expansion of Gloucester County districts such as Williamstown, Clearview, and Kingsway.

In volleyball, the conference has auxiliary members such as Sterling, Pleasantville, and Our Lady of Mercy. In lacrosse, there are auxiliary members such as Clearview, Kingsway, and Haddonfield.

That's always been the conference's hallmark, that ability to expand and adapt to changes in demographics and to the sports landscape, and always with an eye toward offering opportunities to student-athletes.

"Now it's out of sight," Cassi said of the Olympic Conference.

It all started with a track meet on a spring afternoon in 1959.

The men who were there that day were changing with the times. Through 50 years, the Olympic Conference has never wavered from that.