Where is Bridgewater-Raritan among baseball state champs from Somerset County?

When the Bridgewater-Raritan baseball team won the Group 4 state title Saturday night, with a 6-4 win over Eastern, the Panthers became the eighth different school from Somerset County to go all the way, and one of the others hailed from the same district.

Group play in the state tournament was enacted for the 1971 season. From the late ’50s through 1970, only sectional champions were crowned. From 1971 on, seven other Somerset County schools have won state titles.

That includes Bridgewater-Raritan West, which won the Group 2 title in 1989, becoming the second Somerset County school to be a state champion. It took 17 years for the first; that distinction belongs to Ridge, which won the 1987 Group 2 title. (Imagine, Basking Ridge was that small at one time!)

Pingry won Non-Public Group B in 1994, and Immaculata won it the next year, in 1995, along with in 2010. In between, Ridge won a pair of Group 2 titles in 2000 and 2002, while Hillsborough won Group 4 in 2005.

*Bridgewater-Raritan’s Matt Fattore nears the plate after a solo home run to lead off the fifth inning in the NJSIAA Group 4 title game on June 8, 2024 in Hamilton, NJ. (Photo: Mike Pavlichko)*

Rutgers Prep took its only crown in 2013, winning Non-Public B, while Somerville won Group 3 in 2018.

Bridgewater West and East – the second of which made the very first state finals, in Group 4 in 1971 – merged in 1992, so this year’s title was the second for the district, but first for the merged school.

The Panthers’ win also gave Somerset County eleven titles, now three shy of Middlesex County, which has had 14 winners, including two seasons where two county teams won titles.

Here’s a full list of state title winners in the CJSR coverage area:

MIDDLESEX COUNTY / GREATER MIDDLESEX CONFERENCE