Essex County Freeholders honor West Essex HS Track and Field Program

ROSELAND, NJ – The Essex County Board of Chosen Freeholders honored the West Essex High School Track and Field Program for its past four years of success during a special presentation held at Roseland Town Hall in Roseland, New Jersey, on June 21, 2018.

District 4 Freeholder Leonard Luciano and Freeholder President At-Large Brendan Gill sponsored the commendation honoring the boys and girls teams for collectively winning two Group Team championships and seven State Team championships during the period of 2015-2018. Freeholder Luciano, whose district includes the townships of Roseland, Fairfield, Essex Fells, and North Caldwell making up West Essex High School, presented the team with the Commendation, stated his appreciation and noted ‘for all that goes into team sports and what it means to work together.”

Freeholder Luciano congratulated Coach Tony Emering on his passion for the program and recognized that, as Coach Emering notes, “Track and field does not have the spectator following that a lot of other team sports have,” but that “[Emering’s] athletes work just as hard.”

The West Essex Boys Track and Field Team has won five consecutive State Sectional Championships including ones in the spring of 2015, the winter and spring of 2016, and in the winter of 2017 for the North 2 Group 2 division, as well as a State Sectional Championship in the North 1 Group 3 division in the spring of 2017. The team also won the Group 2 State Relay Championship in the winter of 2016. The West Essex Girls Track and Field Team has won back-to-back North 2 Group 2 State Sectional Championships in the winter seasons of 2017 and 2018 and won the Group 2 State Relay Championship in the winter of 2016.

In addition to the teams’ successes, the West Essex High School Track and Field Program has crowned multiple Group State Champions during the period of 2016-2018 including: Reanda Richards, Jenna Chan, Gabriela Karch, Vivian Onnembo Julia Geiger, Alexia Perez, Hailey Blum, Anthony Steets, Isaiah Rodriguez, Drew Lepre, and Liam Frost who all participated on relay teams.

Through 2015-2018, the program has also crowned five first team All-Americans, earned twenty medals at the New Balance National Championships, crowned seventy-five State Sectional Champions, and eighty-one Super Essex Conference Champions.

Additional credit to the program’s success, Head Coach Tim Cullen was honored by NJ.Com with the “Coach of the Year” Award for the State of New Jersey in 2016. The West Essex High School coaching staff consists of: Tim Cullen, Tony Emering, Kevin Kitchin, Anthony Lambo, Jenna Maus-Colucci, Ron Rowe, Clare Sweeney, and Lanaya Torres.  Together, they have worked to combine their talented athletes to create a substantially successful program of boys and girls track and field teams for the past four years.

The coaching staff and the students who have been a part of the program received further administrative support from Director of Athletics Anthony Minnella, Principal Caesar Diliberto, and Superintendent Barbara Longo.