Watchung Hills' Tina Cecala Ready to Head for the Beach

“Tina Cecala: They come along only every so often; there are no two Tina’s.”  That’s how ’s physical education supervisor Mario Diez spoke of the highly-valued department member who will retire at the end of June.

Cecala does, indeed have a formidable record. A graduate of Springfield College (Mass.), which is renowned for its top-notch physical education teacher-training program, Cecala joined the Hills faculty in 1979. She has taught the basic physical education course required of all ninth-graders as well as the many electives offered to students.

The ninth-grade course, she explains, consists of four quarters, in  three of which, in rotation, the students learn a different set of skills (The fourth quarter is devoted to health). For example: badminton, jump rope (on a much more complex level), softball, pickle ball, table tennis, volley ball, Frisbee, routine skills, and so on.

This introduction to a variety of sports should enable them, in grades 10 to 12, to select  among electives. In her time at Hills, Cecala has had the opportunity to teach the whole gamut of phys ed offerings.

Cecala also helps freshmen become aware of their own degree of fitness through the “fitness-gram,” a national, standardized test which assesses cardio-vascular function (pacer test), upper body strength (pushups), abdominal strength (curl-up), and back area (trunk lift). Consequently, they learn to develop and  practice skills which help strengthen and develop these areas.  

Diez says of Cecala, “She pioneered our fitness program in the mid-'80s and is the lead teacher in the area of wellness and physical health.”

Cecala was head coach of the girls track team for eight to 10 years. However, she admits that her “true passion” is swimming, an activity she has coached for 13 years. Her Hills team has won seven  (now named) Skyland Conference titles, eight Somerset County championships, and State championships in ’85-’86, ‘87, ‘89 and ’92. She has also been head coach at the Greater Morristown YMCA for four years.

After her Hills retirement, in fact, Cecala will be the fulltime head coach at the Morristown  “Y”, all summer and weekends, training some 135 boys and girls, ages 6 to 18 years, who will be competitors in such venues as the New Jersey YMCA Swim League and the Junior Olympics.

There have no tremendous changes in the phys ed field in Cecala’s 33 years of teaching. New technologies have made record keeping (attendance, grades, demographics, sign-ins, etc.) easier, and Cecala often “learns from her students.” However, she feels “young people need to be more active, more physically involved. You hardly ever see kids outside playing after school,” she observed. She hopes that the wellness units, the emphasis on fitness, diet, exercise, nutrition  the use of strength enhancing machines, will continue to be a big emphasis in Hills’ phys ed program.

Not surprisingly, Cecala  has successfully passed along her love of physical education, not only to generations of students, but also to her own offspring. Her daughter is now teaching phys ed in North Plainfield’s East End School; her newly-graduated son is seeking a position in the same field. Like their mother, they are both graduates of Springfield College as well.

There will also be room in Cecala’s new life for vacations. Family travel tops the list, especially to any place where there’s a beach.