Donovan Catholic High School, (formerly Monsignor Donovan High School) located in Toms River, is the only

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

Ocean County Ocean County is a county located along the Jersey Shore in the south-central portion of the U.S. state of New Jersey. It borders the Atlantic Ocean on the east. Its county seat is Toms River.New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

, United States, and operates under the supervision of the

Roman Catholic Diocese of Trenton The Diocese of Trenton is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church that encompasses Burlington County, New Jersey, Burlington, Mercer County, New Jersey, Mercer, Monmouth County, New Jersey, Monmouth, and Ocean Cou ...

. Located in the coastal community of Toms River Township, the school originally opened in 1962 as St. Joseph High School, but was renamed as Monsignor Donovan High School after its founder, Msgr. Lawrence Donovan in 1983, before adopting its current name in 2014. Donovan Catholic has been an IB World School since January 2017, offering students the

IB Diploma Programme The International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) is a two-year educational programme primarily aimed at 16-to-19-year-olds in 140 countries around the world. The programme provides an internationally accepted qualification for entry into ...

. Donovan Catholic is the only Catholic high school in New Jersey that offers the IB Diploma Programme. The school is accredited by AdvancED.Donovan Catholic
AdvancEd. Accessed August 20, 2017. As of the 2017-18 school year, the school had an enrollment of 708 students and 61.5 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a

student–teacher ratio Student–teacher ratio or student–faculty ratio is the number of students who attend a school or university divided by the number of teachers in the institution. For example, a student–teacher ratio of 10:1 indicates that there are 10 students ...

of 11.1:1. The school's student body was 85.6% White, 6.9% Asian, 3.1% Hispanic, 1.8% Black, 0.6% Native Hawaiian / Pacific Islander, 0.4% American Indian / Alaska Native and 1.8% two or more races.School data for Monsignor Donovan High School

National Center for Education Statistics The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is the part of the United States Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES) that collects, analyzes, and publishes statistics on education and public school district finance ...

. Accessed August 15, 2017. The school mascot is the

Griffin The griffin, griffon, or gryphon (Ancient Greek: , ''gryps''; Classical Latin: ''grȳps'' or ''grȳpus''; Late Latin, Late and Medieval Latin: ''gryphes'', ''grypho'' etc.; Old French: ''griffon'') is a legendary creature with the body, tail ...

. In the 1960s, the school (then St. Joseph High School) sponsored a contest to name the mascot. Finalists were chosen by the faculty from the submissions, and then the students voted on the finalists. The winning name was George.

Academics

Donovan Catholic has created an enhanced learning community though the educational vehicle known as block scheduling. This model, implemented in the fall of 1998, includes two eighteen-week (Fall and Spring) terms. Terms may be divided into quarters depending on curriculum needs. Students take four courses each term. Each course meets for approximately twice the standard instructional time than is offered under the traditional schedule. In order to graduate, students must complete four years of religious studies, have completed seventy hours of Christian Service, and have taken twenty credits of English, ten credits of United States History, five credits of World History, fifteen credits of Mathematics, fifteen credits of Science, ten credits of the same Foreign Language, three credits of Fine and Practical Arts, and ten credits of Physic and Health/Driver Education. Monsignor Donovan offers a variety of

Advanced Placement Advanced Placement (AP) is a program in the United States and Canada created by the College Board which offers college-level curricula and examinations to high school students. American colleges and universities may grant placement and course ...

courses, including English Literature and Composition, United States History, World History, Psychology, Calculus AB & BC, Biology, Environmental Science, Chemistry, and Physics. Students who excel at Donovan Catholic and who meet particular standards of academics, service, leadership, and character may apply for entry to the

National Honor Society The National Honor Society (NHS) is a nationwide organization for high school students in the United States and outlying territories, which consists of many chapters in high schools. Selection is based on four criteria: scholarship (academic achi ...

Dress code

Students are required to wear uniforms. Girls must wear navy knee socks or tights, and a navy plaid pleated skirt. They may also wear white dress shirts with a navy blue sweater in the winter or blue golf shirts in the fall and spring. The boys wear khaki pants, belt, black or tan Sperry top-siders, dress shirts with a tie and navy blue sweater for the winter, or the blue golf shirts in the fall and spring.

Athletics

The Donovan Catholic High School GriffinsDonovan Catholic High School

New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association The New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) is an association of hundreds of New Jersey high schools that regulates high school athletics and holds tournaments and crowns champions in high school sports. State championsh ...

. Accessed October 20, 2020. compete in Division B South of the

Shore Conference The Shore Conference is an athletic conference of private and public high schools in the U.S. state of New Jersey, centered at the Northern Jersey Shore. All schools in this conference are located within Monmouth County, New Jersey, Monmouth County ...

, an athletic conference comprised of public and private high schools in

Monmouth Monmouth ( , ; cy, Trefynwy meaning "town on the Monnow") is a town and community in Wales. It is situated where the River Monnow joins the River Wye, from the Wales–England border. Monmouth is northeast of Cardiff, and west of London. I ...

and Ocean counties along the

Jersey Shore The Jersey Shore (known by locals simply as the Shore) is the coastal region of the U.S. state of New Jersey. Geographically, the term encompasses about of oceanfront bordering the Atlantic Ocean, from Perth Amboy in the north to Cape May Po ...

.Shore Conference Realignment for 2018-2019 and 2019-2020

. Accessed November 15, 2020. The league operates under the jurisdiction of the

. With 540 students in grades 10-12, the school was classified by the NJSIAA for the 2019–20 school year as Non-Public A for most athletic competition purposes, which included schools with an enrollment of 381 to 1,454 students in that grade range (which is equivalent to Group II for public schools). The school was classified by the NJSIAA as Non-Public Group III for football for 2018–2020. The athletic teams compete in the following sports:

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

powerlifting Powerlifting is a strength sport that consists of three attempts at maximal weight on three lifts: squat, bench press, and deadlift. As in the sport of Olympic weightlifting, it involves the athlete attempting a maximal weight single-lift effor ...

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

hockey Hockey is a term used to denote a family of various types of both summer and winter team sports which originated on either an outdoor field, sheet of ice, or dry floor such as in a gymnasium. While these sports vary in specific rules, numbers o ...

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

swimming Swimming is the self-propulsion of a person through water, or other liquid, usually for recreation, sport, exercise, or survival. Locomotion is achieved through coordinated movement of the limbs and the body to achieve hydrodynamic thrust that r ...

gymnastics Gymnastics is a type of sport that includes physical exercises requiring balance, strength, flexibility, agility, coordination, dedication and endurance. The movements involved in gymnastics contribute to the development of the arms, legs, shou ...

cheerleading Cheerleading is an activity in which the participants (called cheerleaders) cheer for their team as a form of encouragement. It can range from chanting slogans to intense physical activity. It can be performed to motivate sports teams, to ente ...

softball Softball is a game similar to baseball played with a larger ball on a smaller field. Softball is played competitively at club levels, the college level, and the professional level. The game was first created in 1887 in Chicago by George Hanc ...

lacrosse Lacrosse is a team sport played with a lacrosse stick and a lacrosse ball. It is the oldest organized sport in North America, with its origins with the indigenous people of North America as early as the 12th century. The game was extensively ...

tennis Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball ...

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...

wrestling Wrestling is a series of combat sports involving grappling-type techniques such as clinch fighting, throws and takedowns, joint locks, pins and other grappling holds. Wrestling techniques have been incorporated into martial arts, combat ...

track and field Track and field is a sport that includes athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name is derived from where the sport takes place, a running track and a grass field for the throwing and some of the jumping events ...

volleyball Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules. It has been a part of the official program of the Summ ...

sailing Sailing employs the wind—acting on sails, wingsails or kites—to propel a craft on the surface of the ''water'' (sailing ship, sailboat, raft, windsurfer, or kitesurfer), on ''ice'' (iceboat) or on ''land'' (land yacht) over a chosen cour ...

bowling Bowling is a target sport and recreational activity in which a player rolls a ball toward pins (in pin bowling) or another target (in target bowling). The term ''bowling'' usually refers to pin bowling (most commonly ten-pin bowling), though ...

, and

cross country running Cross country running is a sport in which teams and individuals run a race on open-air courses over natural terrain such as dirt or grass. The course, typically long, may include surfaces of grass and earth, pass through woodlands and open coun ...

. The school participates with

Red Bank Catholic High School Red Bank Catholic High School is a four-year private coeducational Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic secondary education in the United States, high school, located in Red Bank, New Jersey, Red Bank in Monmouth County, New Jersey, Monmouth Co ...

in a joint ice hockey team in which

St. Rose High School St. Rose High School is a co-educational four-year Catholic school, Catholic high school in Belmar, New Jersey, Belmar, in Monmouth County, New Jersey, United States. The school operates under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Trento ...

is the host school / lead agency. The co-op program operates under agreements scheduled to expire at the end of the 2023–24 school year. The girls spring track team was the Non-Public A state champion in 2004. The girls cross country team won the Non-Public A state championship in 2004 and 2007. The Donovan Catholic sailing team won the New Jersey High School Sailing Championship in 2005, 2006 and 2007. They also won the CT State High School Sailing Championship in 2005 and 2008. In a period of six years, the M.D.H.S. Sailing Team has qualified for the

Interscholastic Sailing Association The Interscholastic Sailing Association also known as ISSA is the organization that serves as the governing authority for all sailing competition between both public and private secondary schools throughout the United States. The organization's he ...

National Championship four times. The Donovan Catholic boys' bowling team succeeded in the winter of 2006-07, finishing with a 34-11 record and taking home the titles of divisional champions, Shore Conference tournament champions and South Jersey Group II state sectional champions. The boys track team won the spring track state championship in Non-Public A in 2008. The boys' and girls' varsity bowling teams both took 1st place in the Shore Conference in the 2009-10 season, and the Boys took 2nd place in the Sectionals Tournament, and in the States tournament, took 2nd place in their group The Donovan Catholic girls' swimming team won the Ocean County Championship for the first time in school history during the 2007-08 season, a first for a non-public school, then repeated in 2008-09. In 2008, the men's track and field team won the state championship. The 2019 softball team defeated

Mount Saint Dominic Academy Mount St. Dominic Academy is a four-year Catholic college preparatory school for young women located in Caldwell, in Essex County, New Jersey, United States, serving students in ninth through twelfth grades. The school was founded in 1892 by ...

by a score of 11-1 in the final of the tournament to win the Non-Public A state championship, the program's first state title. The 2019 team went into the Tournament of Champions as the top-seeded team and finished the season with a 30-2 record after winning the overall title by a score of 10-0 in five innings under the

mercy rule A mercy rule, slaughter rule, knockout rule, or skunk rule ends a two-competitor sports competition earlier than the scheduled endpoint if one competitor has a very large and presumably insurmountable scoring lead over the other. It is called th ...

against runner-up Cedar Grove High School, the second-seeded team.

NJ.com NJ.com is a digital news content provider and website in New Jersey owned by Advance Publications. According to a report in ''The New York Times'' in 2012, it was the largest provider of digital news in the state at the time. In 2018, comScore r ...

ranked Donovan Catholic as their number-one softball team in the state in 2019. The Donovan Catholic Cheerleading Competition team finished the 2011-2012 season with the best record in school history: *National Champions: First Place, Varsity Level 4, Cheersport National Championships, Atlanta, GA *Grand Champions and Spirit Award: Spirit Unlimited National Championships, Atlantic City, NJ *Grand Champions: Lindenboro Chargers Cheer Classic, Sicklerville, NJ *Grand Champions: Gotta Cheer Snow Globe Challenge, Chester, NJ *Grand Champions: Gotta Cheer Snowdown Showdown, Medford, NJ *1st Place: Cheersport Regional Championship, Philadelphia, PA; Liberty Lion Championship, Jackson, NJ *2nd Place: Cheer Tech Championships, Wildwood, NJ; Jaguar Competition, Jackson, NJ; States, Trenton, NJ

Extracurricular activities

The school's

mock trial A mock trial is an act or imitation trial. It is similar to a moot court, but mock trials simulate lower-court trials, while moot court simulates appellate court hearings. Attorneys preparing for a real trial might use a mock trial consisti ...

team won the Ocean County tournament in 2008 and 2009.

Notable alumni

John Cudia John Cudia is a classical singer and a musical theatre actor who has played many of the biggest roles in musical theatre on Broadway. Born on September 21, 1970, Cudia was raised in Toms River, New Jersey. He graduated from Monsignor Donovan High ...

(born 1970, class of 1988), Broadway actor. * Page Falkinburg (born 1956, class of 1974, but transferred to Point Pleasant Boro High School before graduating),

wrestler Wrestling is a series of combat sports involving grappling-type techniques such as clinch fighting, throws and takedowns, joint locks, pins and other grappling holds. Wrestling techniques have been incorporated into martial arts, combat sport ...

. * Scott Palguta (born 1982, class of 2001), Head Mens Soccer Coach at Colorado College. Former professional soccer player with the

Colorado Rapids The Colorado Rapids are an American professional soccer club based in the Denver metropolitan area. The Rapids compete in Major League Soccer (MLS) as a member of the Western Conference. Founded in 1995, as part of the Anschutz Corporation, la ...

Major League Soccer Major League Soccer (MLS) is a men's professional soccer league sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation, which represents the sport's highest level in the United States. The league comprises 29 teams—26 in the U.S. and 3 in Canada ...

. * Mike Straka (class of 1988),

Fox News The Fox News Channel, abbreviated FNC, commonly known as Fox News, and stylized in all caps, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is owne ...

journalist. *

Glenn Taranto Glenn Taranto is an American actor and screenwriter. He played Gomez Addams in ''The New Addams Family''. He has appeared in six of Paul Haggis' projects. Taranto's first screenplay, ''Stolen'', starring Josh Lucas and Jon Hamm, was produced b ...

(born 1959, Class of 1977), actor and screenwriter.Staff
''Griffin Network Today''
, Spring 2010, Volume 10: Issue 2, p. 15. Accessed July 18, 2011. "Glenn Taranto, an accomplished character actor, is now a successful screen writer. His film, ''Stolen'', starring Josh Lucas and Jon Hamm is being released by IFC."

References

External links

Donovan Catholic High School
website
Donovan Catholic High School

{{Authority control 1962 establishments in New Jersey Educational institutions established in 1962 Private high schools in Ocean County, New Jersey Roman Catholic Diocese of Trenton Catholic secondary schools in New Jersey Toms River, New Jersey