Blast From The Past: 1995 Fair Lawn Boys Volleyball Team Struts Its Stuff

On the same weekend they were inducted into the Fair Lawn High School Athletic Hall of Fame, the 1995 Cutters boys volleyball team recaptured its stellar form on the court.

The 1995 squad–which won the first-ever NJSIAA state championship in the sport and remains the only North Jersey team to do so–swept the much younger 2010 team, which reached the state semifinals, by the score of 15-8, 15-10, 25-17 at the Fair Lawn Community Center on Sunday.

Richard Szura, coach of the 1995 team that was inducted on Saturday at Knights of Columbus, served as referee for the game. The teams played by 1995 rules the first two sets and 2010 rules in the third set.

In 1995, the Cutters compiled a 25-1 record and won their final 22 matches. After defeating Clifton for the state title and besting Collingswood, Cherry Hill West and Cherry Hill East in the state playoffs, Fair Lawn toppled No. 1 seed Bridgewater-Raritan in Bridgewater 15-13, 13-15, 15-13 in the state finals–after trailing 12-9 in the final 10-4 in the final game. Mike Costache slammed a cross-court kill and the visiting bleachers "went nuts," team member Ira Thor recalled in a speech at the induction ceremonies on Saturday.

"It's probably the only time in my life I didn't mind being in a pile of bodies," Thor said.

Arbel Meidav, an outside hitter, was responsible for 35 percent of the Cutters' offense in 1995. He flew in from Southern California to attend the inductions, but Costache topped Meidav's 3,000-mile trip by flying 5,000 miles from Romania to be there, Thor noted in his speech. Thor, the current director of sports information at New Jersey City University in Jersey City and once a play-by-play announcer for USA Volleyball in a men's national final, said that "nothing I've ever been a part of in volleyball meant more to me than sharing this experience with my 10 teammates who were also my friends."

"We appreciate being inducted into the Hall of Fame with so many other accomplished individuals," he said. "And as Coach Szura will remind us, we were able to win this championship because we had two arms and two legs."