NJ wrestling calendar gets a revamp for 2026-27 season
· Yahoo Sports
New Jersey’s wrestling season is getting a trim.
The first day of wrestling practice for the 2026-2027 school year will be Monday, Nov. 30, while the individual state championships will be held Thursday, Feb. 25 to Saturday, Feb. 27. This past season, the finals ran from March 12-14.
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These changes are being made to accommodate the Metro Conference (formerly known as the MAAC) basketball tournament taking over the first weekend in March at Boardwalk Hall.
That announcement was one of a handful made at the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association's virtual meeting on June 10.
NJSIAA executive director Colleen Maguire said moving the date of the state finals – New Jersey’s biggest high school sports event – was the preference of the surveyed coaches and members of the NJSIAA’s powerful leagues and conferences committee.
There had been some chatter about shifting the event away from Boardwalk Hall and keeping the dates the same, but that never got past any speculative stage.
In order to help deal with the reduction to the season, the NJSIAA will allow the three-day “try-out” practice period to count toward the six days of practice and one rest day required before competition is allowed.
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Maguire also said that the new alignment for districts and regions was still being finalized, but that the methodology would not change and she hoped to have the final groupings posted by June 30.
There will also be a subtle change to the non-public wrestling groupings. The NJSIAA will use its non-public/public equivalency formula, which separates non-public schools by size. The formula puts schools that would be in public group 3, 4 or 5 into Non-Public A and teams that would be in public groups 2 and 1 into Non-Public B, rather than just taking all the non-public schools and dividing them in half to create A and B.
This is being done to promote participation in the Non-Public B state wrestling tournament. A similar measure was taken for football last year. Maguire also said that teams in Non-Public B can opt for a waiver to join Non-Public A for wrestling.
The classification process for Non-Public A and B football has also become a talking point, but it’s not clear whether the same waiver opportunity will be granted in that sport.
The girls wrestling team state tournament will be expanded to include 12 teams in each section, up from eight last year, which was the first year the NJSIAA sponsored the event.
Flag football details
Flag football was approved as the state’s newest sanctioned sport last month. For the first time, the NJSIAA revealed its plans for a state tournament and regular-season regulations.
The NJSIAA will set a limit of 14 regular season games, with first practice scheduled to begin March 8, 2027.
There will be two groups, Group A (large schools) and Group B (small schools), sorted by enrollments. There will be North and South sections in each group, with the top 16 teams from each section qualifying.
Maguire stressed that flag football will be characterized as a strenuous sport, meaning girls will no longer be able to play flag and another spring sport. They’ll also have to follow the rule of six days of practice and one day of rest before competition (scrimmages) can begin.
Volleyball gets going
In an attempt to keep volleyball games starting on time, the NJSIAA is codifying warm-up procedures for each team, giving each team 16 minutes and stressing that officials don’t need to be present for warm-up procedures to begin.
Maguire said that officials are not required to be present for any part of the warm-up and that this would be enacted beginning with the girls season in the fall.
News and notes
- The NJSIAA increased the number of games that will count toward power points in multiple sports, saying that more data provides a fairer seeding process. Baseball, basketball, softball, and volleyball will increase to 17 for the 2026-27 school year and 18 for 2027-28. Lacrosse and soccer will increase to 13 next year and 14 for 2027-28.
- Chief compliance officer Paul Popadiuk said that, as of now, there have been 482 disqualifications, with 265 coming in the fall. The spring DQ number of 53 is half as many as last year.
- The NJSIAA approved its budget for 2026-27, expecting increased net assets of $275,000.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NJ wrestling calendar gets a revamp for 2026-27 season