After last year's loss to Don Bosco, will Bergen Catholic ever rock black jerseys again?

They were a reward. They were a surprise. They were a disaster.

“Probably the worst idea we could ever do,” Bergen Catholic football coach Vito Campanile laughs now.

Last year, the Crusaders took their home field against arch rival Don Bosco at home as the defending state champions. They ran on to The Jack and something looked … different.

In place of their usual red and gold jerseys, Bergen Catholic wore black.

Black jerseys with red numbers, and black pants with gold and red striping down the side.

It was a first, and perhaps the last. Although no coach would ever chalk up a poor performance to the jersey color, Don Bosco dominated the Crusaders all afternoon and won 31-7.

The Bergen Catholic black jerseys are 0-1 and officially retired. For now.

“You know, I think I saw a bag of them upstairs in my office about a week ago,” Campanile said. “They are just there. You can buy them, but they are not coming back into circulation any time soon. They won’t be in Ramsey or Montvale or Oradell, I promise you that.”

New jerseys in New Jersey

Whatever you want to call them − vintage jerseys, retro jerseys, alternate jerseys − they are an incredible part of athletics at all levels today.

In college football, the first school teams think about when it comes to special jersey styles is Oregon. Backed by Nike money and marketing, the Ducks seemed to create a weekly jersey reveal that comes with its own language.

If you don’t know it, it’s a three-word phrase. Like on that day in Oradell last year, Bergen Catholic went gold/black/black (color of helmet/jersey/pants). Oregon can go green/white/silver or yellow/green/white. Every week, colleges post jersey reveals on social media. Schools throw in retro styles and new logos to keep the look fresh.

If you ask Campanile, it all went bad/bad/bad, but it wasn’t why Bergen Catholic lost.

“I wasn’t too emotionally invested, I don’t know that jerseys win and lose games,” Campanile said. “I think (Bosco stars) Chase Bisontis, Jordan Thomas and Jayden Brown had a lot more to do with it than the jerseys.”

Why the change?

Bergen Catholic had been gifted a new set of jerseys from Adidas for winning the 2021 New Jersey Non-Public A state title.

Campanile said some players wanted an alternate jersey instead of the usual red and white, so black was chosen, even though it’s not an official school color (no one follows that rule anymore anyway).

And while it may seem like the most trivial thing to traditionalists, letting players at every level have a voice in what they're wearing on game day is a way for coaches to empower the players.

“I feel like the best teams are the player-led teams, so we looked at it more as a reward for what went on in 2021,” Campanile said. “I really think it’s such a critical part of being a coach is developing leadership skills and decision-making skills and that goes beyond the field. We want our kids to have fun and we want them to have a say.”

Not the first, not the last

Bergen Catholic is hardly the first North Jersey non-public superpower to don new threads. When St. Thomas Aquinas (Florida) hosted Don Bosco in 2012 on ESPN, the Raiders wore new bright yellow jerseys for the game. Don Bosco won 20-10 and talk started about the Ironmen getting retro jerseys.

But the same thing happened to Don Bosco. The Ironmen unveiled a bland throwback jersey and lost the first time wearing them, and they have been seen rarely since. The Ironmen have since added a black jersey on top of their traditional maroon.

St. Joseph Regional has tweaked their green and gold jerseys, putting a ‘charcoal’ top in their rotation, and they wore gold jerseys for a game in 2019.

It’s probably only a matter of time before Paramus Catholic goes full metallic gold (helmets too), or DePaul brings out a black alternate. And note that Campanile didn’t say the Crusaders black jersey are gone forever. They’ll be back again someday.

PREVIEWS: Everything you need to know for Friday's Bergen-Bosco game

Still a winner

Of course, things did work out just fine for Bergen Catholic at the end of 2022.

The Crsaders ran into the Ironmen again in the Non-Public A state final at MetLife Stadium and won 45-0 with the traditional gold/white/white.

The black jerseys became a footnote to the Crusaders 2022 season and Campanile can laugh about it all now.

Bergen Catholic is preparing for the annual regular-season meeting with Don Bosco, scheduled for this Friday night in Ramsey. Bergen Catholic has no special jerseys planned, but Campanile jokes that the Ironmen can wear them if they want.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Bergen Catholic NJ football: Story behind ill-fated black jerseys