Chris Boyce had a set of goals for his North Arlington boys basketball team for this season. And while winning a division title was among them, the veteran coach admittedly it wasn’t necessarily at the top of the wish list.
“We have our list of goals that we laid out there for tryouts and we try to take one thing at a time, but winning the league was definitely low (on the list),” said Boyce, in his second season with the Vikings. “I thought we had a chance to compete for the division. I didn’t know exactly where we would be, but I felt like we had a core group of guys that could definitely compete and be up there.”
It turned out the Vikings did more than just compete, they made history as for the first time since 1982 North Arlington’s boys basketball team has won a division title.
The Vikings locked up that long elusive title on Feb. 2 when it defeated Hasbrouck Heights, 54-48 to clinch the NJIC Patriot Division Championship. Senior Jaydis Smith had arguably the best game of his North Arlington career with 21 points, nine rebounds and six assists, while Elijah Zaldivar scored 15 points.
The win sends North Arlington to the NJIC Tournament, which is composed of the league’s six division winners, a group that includes Lyndhurst, which won the Meadowlands Division.
North Arlington, which is 16-5, is the sixth seed in the tournament and travels to third-seeded Cresskill on Monday, Feb. 9. The Vikings enter as a huge underdog against a 19-2 Cresskill team that has long been a gold standard for small school basketball in North Jersey. Regardless of how Monday’s opener or the upcoming state tournament goes, what North Arlington has already accomplished is something that won’t soon be forgotten.
“We’ve been talking about it, saying that’s something that can never be replaced,” Boyce said about the title. “Your year goes on the banner. So you’ll see 2025-2026 Champions and it’ll always be on a banner. There hasn’t been one there in 44 years so that’s something where you come back to visit the school in 30 years and your team will always be there and it can’t be replaced.
“It really is hard to win a division in high school basketball, especially at a school like ours. So you don’t take it for granted. It’s a great accomplishment.”
Lyndhurst has earned the second seed and a first round bye after going a perfect 10-0 in division play.
After an up-and-down start to the season, the Golden Bears have caught fire in recent weeks, winning eight of its last nine games. The lone loss, a one-point defeat to an undefeated Tenafly team currently ranked 12th in the state, in the Bergen County Jamboree.
Just one day after that heartbreaking loss, Lyndhurst clinched its title with a 69-56 win over Manchester Regional on Senior Night. Johnny Chanamed scored a game-high 25 points, while Avery Cano continued his torrid play with 19 points, nine rebounds and seven assists.
Lyndhurst will host the Cresskill-North Arlington winner in the semifinals on Thursday as part of a double-header held at Lyndhurst. The winners will face off in the title game on Wednesday, Feb. 18 at Paterson Charter.
With a 15-8 record with a grueling schedule that includes four games against state-ranked competition, Lyndhurst feels it has the pieces in place to win the tournament, which would likely require a third matchup with top-seeded St. Mary’s of Rutherford.
“At the beginning of the year, we weren’t playing as well as we have in the last couple weeks,” head coach Perrin Mosca said. “This is the best time to start playing together and the right way. So I’m happy for the kids. They put the work in and it’s all coming together.
“These kids are locked in and ready to go. That’s something that they want to bring home to Lyndhurst.”
Lyndhurst and North Arlington are making their first appearances in the NJIC Tournament. The same can be said on the girls side for North Arlington.
The Vikings punched their ticket on Monday when it held off Lyndhurst, 50-46, to clinch the NJIC Patriot Division title, their first championship since 2009. North Arlington’s improved offense was again on display as Lyndsay Gilbert (14 points), Alyssa Sousa (13) and Charlize Torres (10) all finished in double-figures.
“As soon as that final buzzer went off they could hardly contain themselves,” head coach Brendan Queenan said. “We were talking about how we’re about to put our name up on that banner. So they knew how humongous of an achievement this was going to be. It wasn’t just for them, this is done for all the teams that didn’t get it done prior. They knew the magnitude of the achievement.”
North Arlington (18-4), seeded sixth, plays at third-seeded Midland Park on Monday, Feb. 9 with the winner set to face second-seeded Secaucus in Secaucus on Thursday.
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Jason Bernstein | Observer Sports Writer
Jason Bernstein joined The Observer as its sports writer in March 2022, following the retirement of Jim Hague. He has a wealth of sports-writing experience, including for NJ Advance Media (nj.com, The Jersey Journal, The Star-Ledger.)