Shark Beginnings - 2017
It was always talked about in passing, when these two men, former classmates and teammates at William Paterson College, and minor league football teammates for the NJ Raiders spoke in person or communicated by text. It was always suggested by former coaches, players and teammates who would see him while working in the Paterson Public School System, in his roles within the Paterson community at large, or while munching on a slice of pizza downtown, bragging about long ago Thanksgiving games between Eastside and Kennedy High schools.
They remember the days, the successes, the camaraderie, the crowds at old Hinchliffe Stadium on the west side of the city.
We want it back. We miss it. We want to be involved. Minor League back in the City of Paterson. There is a need for it… a thirst for it. An appetite for those who were once a part of it to bring it back like it was twenty years ago, but this time, promising to not let it slip away into the dusk as it once did.
This time, the answer was…
“yes...”
And there they were, former staff members, coaches and players from the former minor league football national champion, NJ Wolverines, meeting, planning, reminiscing once more in a downtown community room. However, it would not be the rebirth of the Wolverines, but a new beginning, a new name, a new success plan, with many of the same principles that made the Wolverines the terror of the entire northeast. At the head of it all, the same man with the same smile and the same vision to give back to Paterson, all that it has given to him, Mark Fischer.
The rebirth of minor league football in the city of Paterson will be the Silk City Sharks. On Fischer’s right side, as it was, even before the days of the Wolverines, was Mike Harris, bringing over thirty-four years of experience in minor league football as a player on Paterson’s old North Jersey Steelers, NJ Raiders and NJ Giants.
After his retirement in 1994, Harris and Fischer often spoke about forming a minor professional football league, to instill pride and professionalism back into the game. They had often travelled to sites with no goal posts, no lined, regulation fields, no lights, and playing conditions littered with gravel, glass chips and all kinds of assorted debris… and these were fields where public high school authorities allowed their students to participate. Fischer and Harris decided that their league would not have such things, nor would any organization be allowed to join after being carefully vetted…
This was the Garden State Football League.
However, two separate opportunities beckoned simultaneously. A new professional indoor football league with operations within the New Jersey Meadowlands complex - The New Jersey Red Dogs.
Fischer, went with the Red Dogs, instantly making then a national indoor professional powerhouse, and Harris stayed with the Garden State Football League, instantly turning it from a seven team start up, into an 18 team, four state nationally recognized powerhouse, with two national minor league football championships.
The two of them knew that their paths their visions and their experiences would reconnect down the road. After Harris’ retirement in 2001, and the disbandment of the NJ Red Dogs shortly afterward, Fischer struck gold with the newly formed NJ Wolverines, and Harris was not far behind in joining.
Today, back together with former coaches, players and teammates, the Silk City Sharks will be bursting out of the confinements of ideas and conversations, onto Baurle Field in Paterson, and back onto the national minor league football stage.
It asked him, implored him, many voices, many moments, many years… The time is right, the moment is right, the vision was clear and the vision aligned with so many people who made it work the first time around.
Mark Fischer said… “yes…”
Silk City Sharks…
City of Paterson…
2017 Minor League Football….
FEAR THE FISH....