St. Joseph of Metuchen junior shortstop Josiah Brown. (Photo: Mike Pavlichko)
When the Middlesex baseball team won the statewide Group 1 title in 2021, and the Hillsborough Raiders won football’s South Group 5 championship, going 13-0 last year, it was the culmination of years of hard work, often together.
Most of the Blue Jays had been played Little League together; some even met there. Most of the Raiders had grown up on the Pop Warner fields in town.
That’s not typically the case at a parochial school like St. Joseph-Metuchen, where students often come from several towns away in any direction, and might take more time to mesh.
Which made it all the more remarkable what the Falcons did last year, playing consistent team baseball as they learned about each other, considering there was no 2020 baseball season, and not everyone was in school. They went on to win the GMC Tournament championship.
This year, the Falcons – now the top-seed – are in the finals again, looking for back-to-back titles and their eighth overall, when they take on 6th-seed North Brunswick at 2 pm Saturday at East Brunswick Tech’s Ray Cipperly Field. You can hear the game on Central Jersey Sports Radio with Mike Pavlichko and Justin Sontupe calling all the action; click here to listen.
CJSR’s Mike Pavlichko talked about the 2022 season, their 2021 bonding, and Saturday’s title tilt with junior shortstop Josiah Brown. Click below to listen: