State tournament a cruel, cold reminder of how quickly a special season can end, but there’s still much to remember

When fans in the Central Jersey Sports Radio coverage area woke up Friday morning, they had seven teams alive, all playing for championships in a span of two days.

In a span of 20 hours, it was all over for six of the seven.

Few teams win championships; that’s the nature of sports. Of the 68 teams in March Madness, 67 will have their season end in a loss.

But after 24 years covering high school sports, it never ceases to be staggering to this reporter how quickly it can all end.

Unlike professional sports, and maybe more similar to college, high school athletics are much less predictable. There are different styles of play that are as wide and varied as the geographical regions of this amazing state.

In two hours, you can drive from the sparsely-populated mountains to major urban centers to densely-populated blue collar suburbs to county lanes dotted with horse farms to the Jersey Shore and everything in between.

Along the way you can find gritty teams that play on dirt infields with non-existent outfield fences, teams that small-ball you, fearsome slugging lineups, and teams that survive on a wealth of pitching arms, whether community college prospects or D1 commitments.

Regardless, the state tournament, year-in and year-out, is the great equalizer, in which seeds are almost meaningless, and the matchup or a story line, an inspiration or pure frustration is sometimes more important than the talent.

Old Bridge is the last team left from our area. What a turnaround from Friday morning, which started with North Brunswick, Bridgewater-Raritan, Spotswood, Middlesex, Rutgers Prep and St. Joseph-Metuchen all still very much alive in the NJSIAA sectional playoffs.

Now, the Knights beat North Brunswick three times this year, and only saw Zack Konstantinovsky pitch one inning against them. If you asked head coach Matt Donaghue, he’d be lying to tell you anything other than he’d rather not face Zack if he had a choice, particularly in a sectional final. If they did have to face him, he’d also be right and smart to tell you they’d love a chance to win a championship against him, too. But when Mother Nature forced the GMC finals to be played one day later, that eventually kept Zack out of the sectional finals.

And after a tight game throughout, North Brunswick’s season is over without any postseason hardware. Old Bridge – the only team in the stacked GMC Red Division to have beaten every other Red team at least once – moves on to the Group 4 semifinals in the later afternoon Monday at Fred Cole Field.

Baseball is perhaps the toughest sport to have one-and-dones. It’s part of high school and college basketball, and football at all levels, but, well, it’s not easy to win a baseball game, but consider this: even the worst team in Major League Baseball about 60 times a year.

Look at Bridgewater-Raritan. They scored 49 runs in three state tournament games, but only managed two against Bayonne in the North 2, Group 4 final at their own yard, where the wind had been carrying everything out for the last week-and-a-half, but couldn’t find a Panther baseball in a haystack Friday afternoon, even as the Bees, inexplicably, hit three. Who would have thought?

Look at Middlesex, who had so greatly dominated Point Pleasant Beach until 2022, ending their season four straight years until dropping last year’s CJ1 final to the Garnet Gulls at Mountainview Park. The visitors that day let out such relief at the win. This year, Middlesex, a perennial division champ, placed third after Sayreville and veteran, heavy-hitting Woodbridge. And almost as an afterthought, there they were in the finals, like they are every year. It’s old hat for them, even with few returnees, and an entirely new roster of players. But now, the pendulum appears to have swung back to Point. Imagine!

Look at Spotswood, with two 8th-inning walk-off heroic acts, playing for fallen young teammate Matthew Carlson, who died around Thanksgiving in a tragic ATV accident. Team of destiny, maybe? They’re gritty, too, aggressive, feisty, adept at small-ball. But, sometimes the storyline doesn’t always go to plan when you run into the top seed, and Rumson ended it before you could blink.

And who might have figured that for several innings, St. Joseph-Metuchen – the GMC Tournament champ that turned a rare trick – beating Zack Konstantinovsky – would have a lead that might take them to a title? Jimmy Mulvaney’s sidearm delivery had Red Bank Catholic – the Shore Conference and Monmouth County Tournament champions puzzled all morning and into the p.m. hours. The slugging Caseys had failed to slug, or even get a base runner more than 90 feet away from home plate. The table was set for a huge upset in front of a throng of media, including two live broadcasts, and hundreds of fans, which at one point included Zack himself. But after the game was tied at 1-1, a miscommunication here, an error here, a few hits here and there, and all of a sudden the Falcons faced a final at bat, down three. And with a 1-2-3 inning their season was over.

Rutgers Prep already was amazing story, starting the season 1-6, then, after one more loss, winning the Somerset County Tournament with five straight playoff victories. They got back to .500 at 14-14 with their semifinal win over Gill St. Bernard’s. And had a 3-1 lead against a tiny Bergen County Catholic school that only has a third of an outfield fence. Sometimes, though, the little guy wins, even if St. Mary-Rutherford was the top seed. Who’d have thought?

In the end, there’s a lot to be proud of for all those teams that made finals, especially in light of the 2020 season being cancelled due to COVID; this year’s seniors almost rebuilt those programs from the ground up, starting as sophomores.

Rutgers Prep rallied the entire season and won the Somerset County Tournament title. St. Joe’s beat one of the most dominating pitchers ever to stand 60 feet, six inches away from home plate in the GMC to win the that tournament title. Casey Cumiskey of Spotswood closed one of the school’s all-time best Charger offensive careers. North Brunswick had quite the run, and a 2022 GMCT championship to its credit. Bridgewater-Raritan had some huge wins early in the season over Ridge and Hunterdon Central. And few expected the Middlesex of the past few years in 2023, yet there they were again, right in the mix for a title, and will likely be back again next year.

But sometimes the storylines do win. Let’s go back up to Rutherford, where a former Falcon – on the same day his old teammates lost their grip on a trophy – figured prominently in grabbing one.

In a 3-3 game, Xavier Arana – a Newark kid who wanted to play outfield more regularly and left Metuchen to play in Bergen County – takes the mound in relief for St. Mary. He holds it down. He gets plunked to lead off the seventh, and comes around to score the game winning run.

Again, I ask, who would have thought?