Coming off COVID shutdown and winless season, Piscataway earns CJSR’s “Turnaround Team of the Year” honors in ’22

The fall of 2020 was not an easy one for Dan Higgins, or his players. When the district shut down the fall sports season due to the COVID-19 pandemic – one of two districts to do so in the Big Central Conference that year, the other being Carteret – Higgins all of a sudden had no team to coach.

And it wasn’t just the fact there were no games. There were no practices, no weight room, no film study, no team meals. Nothing.

Some players even moved on to other schools.

To return in 2021 made things normal in a way, but not in another, as the program – no doubt hurt by a year away from football – struggled mightily. Seniors had not played since their sophomore year. Young contributors, normally key to the Chiefs’ success, saw their football IQ stunted. And the varsity went 0-8, its first winless season since 1968.

After a loss in the opener to Hunterdon Central, one could be forgiven if Piscataway hung its collective head. Instead, they went 6-2 to the rest of the way, to finish 6-3, with a berth in the state playoffs, just three seasons removed from becoming the first Middlesex County school to go 13-0 when they won the inaugural North Group 5 “bowl” game at MetLife Stadium in the Meadowlands.

Click below to listen to Mike Pavlichko talk with Piscataway head coach Dan Higgins:

Honorable Mentions:

The Spotswood Chargers had a remarkable turnaround in 2022 under second-year head coach Chris Meagher. After winning seven games in Andy Cammarano’s final three seasons before stepping down, Meagher’s team struggled mightily in 2021, going 1-8 and getting shut out five times in the process, scoring under six points a game. This year, they went 7-3 – amazingly missing the playoffs, another story for another time. They improved to 19 points per game on the offensive side, while pitching one shutout and holding four teams to single digits on the scoreboard.

Another great turnaround happened in South Plainfield, where the Tigers rebounded from a 2-8 season in 2021 – where they lost half of those games by eight points or less – to run the table in the 2022 regular season, winning their first-ever division title, taking the Big Central’s United Silver Division crown. They went 8-0 before falling in the playoffs at home to Camden Eastside, their first loss of the season.