Photos courtesy of Marc Jacobson

By Steve Sears

It’s the game that is highly anticipated every spring in Wayne.

“Across the board, when you look at any athletics here in Wayne – especially at the high school level – that’s the one game that everybody circles on their calendar,” says Wayne Valley High School lacrosse Head Coach Rob Glander of the annual Mayor’s Cup game between his club and Wayne Hills High School. “A lot of the kids grew up playing sports together, and come high school, they get split up. It’s an opportunity to see each other again and compete against them. It’s a pretty neat rivalry to be a part of.”

Former Wayne Township Mayor Scott Rumana had a love for the game of lacrosse, and he and a number of parents played a big role in starting lacrosse at the Wayne PAL, which back then had both a boy’s and girl’s program, and then was and still is now a breeding ground for young lacrosse players. In order to further its growth in the town, Rumana also in the early 2000s approached Wayne Hills and Wayne Valley high schools about adopting a lacrosse program, which both did. 

As to the Mayor’s Cup, it first was contested between the school’s hockey programs, and eventually someone approached Rumana about the possibility of one for lacrosse. The annual game has now been played for 17 years. 

“Wayne Valley has 12 wins and Wayne Hills has five wins,” says Wayne Valley Athletic Director, Dave Drozjock. “They’ve played every year except for 2020, which was the COVID year.”

After the Mayor’s Cup contest is over, the winning team will take a picture with the cup, and then it’s sent off to the trophy shop for engraving, and is returned to the winning squad to be displayed for a year in their trophy case. Glander’s Indians are keeping the trophy for a second straight season. They defeated Marc Jacobson’s Patriots in late April, 6 – 2. A week later, however, the two teams played in the Passaic County Tournament, with Hills coming away with a 4 – 2 victory.

Jacobson has been the coach at Wayne Hills for 15 seasons. “It’s been basically since lacrosse started in Wayne,” he says of the Mayor’s Cup. “It’s a unique rivalry because these kids all grew up playing lacrosse together in youth, and then when they get to high school, they’re separated basically by geography as far as where they live in the town. All of a sudden, there’s a rivalry between Wayne Hills and Wayne Valley, but there’s also a friendship and a bond.” But then comes the possibility of bragging rights. “Every year it’s the opportunity to have bragging rights for 365 days until next time we do it,” Jacobson adds. “Besides the county tournament and the states, it’s the biggest game of the year, and it’s always a battle, no matter whether one team is up and one team is down, just because both coaches know each other so well and the system so well, and the players all know each other so well. It’s such an emotional game, and it’s almost always going to be a very hard-fought game.”

Glander is in his fifth year at Wayne Valley, and when he first arrived, he and Jacobson got together and talked about the often heated rivalry between the two schools. “We didn’t want it that way,” Jacobson says. “We wanted lacrosse first in this town, and we wanted the kids to realize that, yes, it’s fun to play each other and beat each other, but we really wanted both to do well. There’s a huge mutual respect between coach and I, and we want to keep the rivalry going and to not make it the end all-be all, and a too big a moment for the kids.”

“It’s nice to be able to coach against somebody who has as much experience as he does,” Glander says with respect regarding Jacobson. “He graduated from Ridgewood High School, and his father being the coach he was over in Ridgewood, you learn to respect those names throughout the course of New Jersey lacrosse. Being able to coach against him has been an honor. It’s been a fun challenge, and come game time, he and I are two coaches coaching against each other. But once the game is over, we have a great relationship off the field.”