Seton Hall Preparatory School

History

Founded in 1856, Seton Hall Preparatory School is the oldest Catholic college preparatory school in New Jersey.

Bishop James Roosevelt Bayley, first Bishop of Newark and nephew of Elizabeth Ann Seton, purchased an estate in Madison, New Jersey using money donated by Catholic Charities, that would become the site of Seton Hall Prep. Five priests and eight laymen formed a Board of Directors to establish a Catholic preparatory school, college and seminary. The inaugural class of five students first met on December 1, 1856.

Seton Hall President Rt. Rev. Bernard McQuaid purchased an estate in South Orange in 1857, to which the school moved in 1860 to accommodate a larger student body. The Prep subsequently would spend the next 125 years on the institution’s South Orange campus.

Until 1928 the President of Seton Hall College was also the head of the Preparatory Division. At that time, Rev. D.A. Mulcahy became the high school’s first director. The following year Rev. William Bradley was named director, then principal and ultimately the school’s first headmaster in 1938.

The Prep school’s population grew further over the next decades, with peaks in enrollment during World War II and in the mid 1970s. The school occupied three main buildings on the university campus— Mooney Hall, Duffy Hall and Stafford Hall. A significant portion of the student body boarding on campus until The last of the boarding students graduated in the mid-1950s.

In the early and mid twentieth century Prep drew its students principally from Essex and Union counties, but as the state’s transportation system expanded in the 1960s and 1970s, the school began to draw students from Morris, Bergen, Hudson, Passaic and Middlesex counties.

In 1980, Rev. Michael E. Kelly became the first alumnus headmaster. Five years later The Prep acquired an 11-acre (45,000 m²) campus of its own in nearby West Orange.

In 1993, the school purchased a 44-acre (180,000 m²) tract of land on nearby Prospect Avenue, overlooking the New York City skyline. Beginning in 1993 The Prep began construction on the Edward D. and Helen M. Kelly Athletic Complex there.

In 2005 the school celebrated two milestones, marking The Prep’s 150th anniversary, as well as the 25th anniversary of Msgr. Kelly’s headmastership.

Prep life

The Prep offers a co-curricular activities program, with numerous academic, service, performance, cultural, publication, and recreation clubs and activities. Additionally, the Prep offers fifteen interscholastic sports, most with accompanying sub-varsity level teams. The main campus, accessible to Interstate 280 and several bus and train routes, is augmented by a nearby 44-acre (180,000 m²) site, The Kelly Athletic Complex (KAC), providing auxiliary athletic facilities, including a 400m all-weather track, a game field for lacrosse and soccer, and practice fields.

Demographics

Students coming from ten New Jersey counties and Staten Island, New York City, the breadth of background the students bring to academic and extracurricular activities is a source of great pride. Drawing students from such a wide area, more than 130 towns, even Staten Island and New York City, the Prep draws its student population from points as far as Jamesburg and Edison, to Chester and Denville, to Lyndhurst and Montville, to Pompton Plains and Kinnelon as well as Paterson and also Hoboken. At the same time more than 80 students come from West Orange itself, 75 from neighboring South Orange/Maplewood and East Orange, and large contingents from close-by Bloomfield, Cedar Grove, the Caldwells, Verona, Morristown, Florham Park, East Hanover, Summit, Livingston and Morris Plains.

Philosophy

Seton Hall takes as its mission the development of the whole man—spiritual, intellectual, social and physical. Seton Hall community proceeds from a belief that growth as a whole person is not limited to secular knowledge but involves the spiritual fulfillment that has been a central concern in its educational tradition. In as much as such growth and maturity are rooted in personal and social responsibility, a code of conduct and expectations is in place to guide the student community in their daily activities. Consequent to its Catholic identity, the Prep seeks to foster an ecumenical and diverse community, faithful to a Judeo-Christian heritage.

School Song

Alma Mater sons be loyal,
Keep her name in purest light.
Never waver from her precepts,
Guard her banner blue and white.
O sing her praise to highest skies
And be ye faithful in her eyes,
For she will foster all your dreams,
Her name is Seton Hall.
Her name is Seton Hall.

Extracurricular activities

"The Prep" offers many activities. Most students are involved in some type of after school program. Some of these clubs are as follows.

Other organizations at "The Prep" include Future Business Leaders of America, the Future Lawyers Club, and Future Physicians of America.

In 1958–59, 1964–66 and again in 1968, the school's chess team was the New Jersey high school team champion, winning the Father Casimir J. Finley Trophy.

Athletics

The Seton Hall Prep Pirates compete in the Super Essex Conference, following a reorganization of sports leagues in Northern New Jersey by the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA). Prior to the NJSIAA's 2010 realignment, the school had competed as part of the Iron Hills Conference, which was made up of public and private high schools in Essex County, Morris County and Union County.

Baseball

Following the 2007 baseball season, the Pirates were ranked 1st in the country by a number of media outlets. The team was led by Rick Porcello who was selected by the Detroit Tigers as the 27th pick overall in the first round of the 2007 Major League Baseball Draft. He signed a contract with the Tigers in August for $7 million, the richest deal ever for a high school player. In its May 28, 2007 update, Baseball America ranked Seton Hall Prep third in the country, the only New Jersey school on its Top 50 ranking. The team won the Baseball - North A state sectional championship with a 3-0 shutout of Immaculata High School in the tournament final. The 2007 team moved on to win the North A State Championship with a 10-1 win against St. Joseph High School.

Seton Hall Prep currently has 24 state baseball championships. The Prep also has four North championships.

Basketball

The boys basketball won the 2005 Non-Public, North A, state sectional champion, defeating Saint Joseph Regional High School, 63-54 in the final game. The team went on to win the 2005 Tournament of Champions, with a 63-60 win over St. Patrick's High School, in a game played at Continental Airlines Arena.

The Basketball team's longtime head Coach Bob Farrell has achieved his 700th career win during the 2007-2008 season, the same night that then senior Ashton Gibbs broke Keven McDonald's all-time scoring record.

Also in 2008, senior guard Ashton Gibbs, broke Keven McDonald's over 30-year-old all-time scoring record of 1,774 points. Gibbs was a highly touted recruit and currently attends the University of Pittsburgh and has seen considerable playing time as a freshman, most recently in the elite eight loss to Villanova University on March 28, 2009.

In 2008, freshman Sterling Gibbs was ranked fourteenth from Hoop Scoop's exclusive ranking of the top players at the Freshman All American camp at Hoop Magic Sports Academy in Chantilly, Virginia

Seton Hall Prep has had a storied history of winning as well as a reputation for churning out NCAA Division I talent. Prep alumni including: Ira Bowman, Brevin Knight and Brandin Knight have gone on to play in the National Basketball Association as well as numerous others with notable success overseas and in the NBADL. Recent Pirate Basketball Alumni include: Ashton Gibbs (Pitt) and Sterling Gibbs (Texas). Once known as a feeder school for the Seton Hall University Basketball Program, the Prep is known as a state as well as national brand in the game of basketball with coaches and recruiters from the Big East and ACC all the way to the Pac-12 regularly making trips to the West Orange campus to evaluate talent. Alumni Brandin Knight (Pitt), Ira Bowman (NJIT), Marcus Toney-El (FDU) are all currently Division 1 Assistant Basketball Coaches, and Michael Malone is an assistant with the NBA's Golden State Warriors.

Lacrosse

The lacrosse team won the Group IV state championship in 2004, defeating Christian Brothers Academy in the championship game.

Soccer

The soccer team won the 2005 North A state sectional championship with a 5-0 win over Don Bosco Preparatory High School. In 2007 the team achieved a number one statewide ranking from The Star-Ledger and a number five ranking in a national coaches' poll. The 2007 team won the North A state sectional championship with consecutive 3-2 wins over No. 1 ranked Don Bosco, and then the new No. 1 team and rival Delbarton in the North Jersey Final. The team moved on to win the Non-Public A State Championship with a 2-0 win over Christian Brothers Academy. They finished the season at 22-1, with several school records: 16 shutouts, 22 wins, 95 goals.

In 2009, the Seton Hall Prep soccer won another state championship; defeating Christian Brothers Academy 1-0. SHP finished the season Number 1 in the state and Number 8 in the nation. In 2010, the Seton Hall Prep Soccer team was ranked Number 1 in the nation but failed to secure back to back championships.

Track

Since the program's inception, the Pirates indoor and outdoor track teams have produced individuals and relay teams that consistently compete on the conference, state, and national level. A number of former Pirates have competed on the international level for the United States and Jamaica.

In 2007, the Pirates established a school record 4 x 400M relay time of 3:13.83, which won the NJ Meet of Champions in 2007, and also won a State Championship for track. The relay team consisted of Grant Mayes (Syracuse University), Corey Alexander (George Mason), Patrick Blackie (University of Miami), and Clayton Parros (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). In 2009, Clayton Parros established a school and New Jersey all-time state record in the 400m running a time of 45.71 seconds, breaking the record that had been held by Olympian Dennis Mitchell since 1984.

Hockey

For decades, the Pirates had been among the elite of New Jersey High School Hockey Programs, along with long-standing rivalries with Bergen Catholic and Delbarton (which had even been mentioned in an episode of HBO's The Sopranos). During the 1990s and early 2000s the SHP hockey team was known to have a devoted following with large groups of fans traveling to away games as far as Connecticut, Long Island and Philadelphia. Their home ice is South Mountain Arena at the Richard J. Codey Ice Rink in West Orange, New Jersey (the former practice facility of the NHL's New Jersey Devils). Former Coach Peter Herms had established a tradition of excellence over time and that winning that has proven difficult to replicate in the years since his departure. Many alumni blame athletic director Joe Walsh for the program's demise for his inability to work effectively with the coach which led to Herms' resignation and departure in 2010. Coach Herms was inducted into the inaugural class of the New Jersey High School Ice Hockey Hall of Fame. Herms, along with co-coach John Warchol (who is also a member of the inaugural class of the Hall of Fame), helped guide Seton Hall to six Gordon Cup championships, four NJSIAA Non-Public titles and three Tournament of Champions crowns (1998, 1999, and 2004).

Notable alumni

List of Seton Hall Preparatory School alumni