Joe Yun is an accomplished cellist who has played Carnegie Hall and also the quarterback for NV/Demarest's undefeated football team that will play for the Ivy Division championship on Saturday.

DEMAREST – Ask a football player the question, “What do you play?” and the answer is usually going to be one of the obvious ones…linebacker, wide receiver, punter, etc. But ask junior Joe Yun, the quarterback of the undefeated Northern Valley/Demarest football team, or senior right guard Mingyu Jeong that question and they have to think about it for a second.

Yun, might say, “Cello.” Jeong might answer, “Saxophone.’ Both are key pieces to Demarest’s undefeated football season that will culminate this Saturday in the Ivy Division championship game against Cliffside Park/Ridgefield and both had somewhere to be shortly after last Thursday’s semifinal win over North Bergen.

Yun and Jeong had to hustle up the hill in time to make it to the fall music presentation and they both took part still in full football regalia.

“We had enough time, but we were debating whether to go on [stage] with our football uniforms on. It would be special to perform in our full jerseys. We decided to do it and when we walked in we got a lot of stares,” said Yun, who played two completely different acts to two completely different audiences in one night. “I was kind of nervous about it, but while we were waiting Dr. Sabatini [the high school principal] pulled us out and took a picture of us. It was a pretty surreal experience.”

It is also an experience that bucks a recent trend in New Jersey high school football, which, in many places, has become a 10-month-a-year, commit-or-quit endeavor. The season now starts even before the academic school year and to win one of the five state titles on offer in the new era of ‘playing down to one state champion,’ a public school is expected to play 13 or 14 games, the same number as a Division 1 college program that participates in a Bowl game or even one more.

The Ivy Division, set up for schools struggling with participation, has alleviated some of those burdens and Demarest, like other schools in a similar position, have created further flexibility. Jeong was more than willing to forgo his saxophone performance in favor of the North Bergen game, but he did not have to.

Mingyu Jeong went from playing sax in the marching band to Demarest's starting right guard.

“This playoff game meant so much to me and I knew that I might have to make sacrifices,” said Jeong. “I was ready to not go to the concert, but Ms. [Danielle] Wheeler, my band teacher, made a great effort to delay the concert just for us two.”

Wheeler pushed the concert’s start time back an hour, changed the order of performances and everything went smoothly from there.

Yun is used to such juggling. A junior whose GPA is above a 4.8, he wants to pursue medicine as a profession, and also has the idea of adding a second major in music so that he does not have to put down his cello. He is a high-level musician who has already played at Carnegie Hall. Throw in the role as starting quarterback on the football team and he makes time for everything, or almost everything.

“That is the one problem; I don’t get a lot of sleep. We have football practice right after school, so I get home at like 6 or 6:30. Then I eat dinner and do homework for a couple of hours, maybe until like 9 or 10 o’clock,” said Yun. “Then I will practice the cello from 10 to 11 or 12 and if I have a test the next day then I will probably study for that a little bit more, get to sleep at like 1 or 2 and then wake up and do it again.”

Yun picked up the cello in elementary school and was hooked almost immediately. That Jeong, a senior who wants to study exercise science in college, was double-dipping is a whole story unto itself. He started playing the sax as a hobby during COVID, honed his craft watching YouTube videos of The Epic Sax Guy and others and as a freshman and sophomore he was a member of the marching band. Then he was plucked out of the hallway by former Demarest football coach Nick Guttuso, who is now the head coach at Ramapo.

“Our previous head coach recruited me to play football. He was like, ‘Hey, you are a big kid, you should play football. We could use you on the offensive line,” said Jeong, laughing at his origin story. “Now I am just so grateful to be a part of this program. I went from a kid who plays the saxophone in the marching band to being a part of this team. Going from 1-8 last year to 8-0 is surreal.”

Yun has been a huge part of that success, too, but is he a quarterback that plays cello or a cellist that plays football?

“Statistically I am a cello player that plays football. I am a lot better at the cello, but right now my priority is football,” said Yun. “I like to keep the two worlds separate, but sometimes they collide. I get a lot of teasing from the athletic department, but it is all good, it’s fun. I enjoy it and it is so good for me that I get to show both sides of my life. I have my academic side with the cello and studying and I have my athletic side with football and being a part of this undefeated team.”

So it is with a right guard that was late to the game and a future physician or the next Yo-Yo Ma taking snaps that Demarest will enter Saturday’s championship game.

“With Mingyu we took a kid that was in the marching band for two years and he became the starting right guard for us last year. What a great addition to the program and what a great kid. And with Joe, you heard his GPA, I never have to worry about him not knowing what to do” said Rob Petrella, who was an assistant to Guttuso before being elevated to head coach this year. “Also having that connection between the different aspects of the school is so important. We have a diverse community of kids. We have kids in the band, probably half of our team is in the National Honor Society, we have kids in theatre and it makes for a pretty unique football experience.”

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