Doing the conference shuffle: 22 Middlesex, Somerset teams find a new home in ’23

Forget realignment, both the Greater Middlesex and Skyland Conferences will see some major reconstruction in their divisional alignments for baseball this season.

Of the 32 teams in the GMC, 17 will be playing in a new division in 2023, with the creation of a fifth division – the GMC Silver.

And in the Skyland, eight of the 32 are moving, with a seven teams (five from the CJSR coverage area) going to a new Division, and North Plainfield now in the GMC, as it began playing there in all sports (except football’s Big Central) for the 2022-23 school year. And the Raritan Division makes it’s return after a two-year hiatus.

GMC adds a division…

The Silver essentially becomes the fifth division, as the bottom six teams from last season’s GMC Gold Division standings form the new group of six: Calvary Christian, Dunellen, Highland Park, Perth Amboy Magnet, Piscataway Magnet and Wardlaw-Hartridge.

South Amboy and Timothy Christian remain in the Gold, joined by four baseball teams that played in the Blue Division last season: Carteret, East Brunswick Magnet, New Brunswick and Somerset Tech.

Remaining in the Blue Division – which was the smallest last year at six teams – are South River and St. Thomas Aquinas. First-year GMC school North Plainfield moves into the Blue, while Metuchen, JFK, Piscataway and Spotswood come down into the Blue from the White, with the Chiefs easily the largest school in the division.

The White Division will keep Colonia, Middlesex, Sayreville and Woodbridge, adding Edison, JP Stevens and Perth Amboy from the Red.

Fresh off its first-ever GMC Tournament championship, North Brunswick moves up to the Red – the division least touched by the GMC’s realignment – as six teams remain: East Brunswick, Monroe, Old Bridge, St. Joseph-Metuchen, South Brunswick and South Plainfield.

The shuffle leaves the top three divisions – the Red, White and Blue – with seven teams each, while the Gold and Silver will have six each.

The addition of an extra division will matter little to postseason play. Unlike basketball, there’s no requirement that each of the division winners get a top eight seed since there are two tournaments: the main GMC Tournament, and the Invitational, for those not seeded among the first 16. However, the addition of North Plainfield giving the league 33 teams means that unless one school opts out, there will be 17 in the Invitational, and a play-in game would be required.

Back to tradition, mammoth Delaware Division is gone…

After the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown the 2020 season, the Skyland Conference experimented with a three-division setup, which left a mammoth ten-team Delaware Division. That’s gone now, with the season more compressed, and less time for divisional play.

So, the league is back to the traditional four-division format, with the return of the Raritan Division.

In the top division – the Delaware – Bridgewater-Raritan, Hillsborough, Hunterdon Central, Immaculata, Ridge and Watchung Hills will remain in what is back to a more reasonably-sized six-team division, allowing for ten divisional games.

Montgomery, North Hunterdon, Phillipsburg and Somerville will leave the Delaware and join the newly-reformed Raritan Division, which also will take Franklin and Rutgers Prep out of the Valley for form another six-team grouping.

In the Valley, Bernards, Gill St. Bernard’s, Voorhees and Warren Hills will remain, to be joined by Pingry for a five-team division.

And the Mountain – having only lost Pingry – remains mostly in tact as another five-team division: Belvidere, Bound Brook, Delaware Valley, Manville and South Hunterdon.