New South Brunswick head coach Mike Gerst held the same position at Fort Lee the last two seasons, pictured here with his staff (third from right) in an undated photo. (@mcgerst21 on Instagram)
The South Brunswick football program has a new head coach, as Mike Gerst has been hired to take over the Vikings for the 2026 season.
The hire was approved by the Board of Education last Thursday evening, according to Athletic Director Edward Knapp.
The 32-year-old Gerst comes to the Monmouth Junction school from Fort Lee, where he spent the last two years in his first head coaching job.
The Bridgemen were 16-3 under Gert’s leadership, going 7-3 in his inaugural season, and 9-0 last year, including 7-0 in the Super Football Conference’s Ivy Red Division. Ivy Divisions are meant for smaller schools that are rebuilding, and are ineligible for the state playoffs. Fort Lee has won eleven straight games, going back to its last two contests of the 2024 season.
The 9-0 record was the first in over a hundred years of football at Fort Lee, Gerst told Central Jersey Sports Radio on Tuesday.
Gerst replaces Ibrahim Halsey, who had come to South Brunswick from Roselle in 2024, the same year Gerst landed the Fort Lee job. Halsey was 7-12 in two seasons, failing to make the playoffs either year. The Vikings last qualified for the postseason in 2023, in the final year under Joe Goerge, who left South Brunswick to take the head job at Woodbridge, replacing Joe LaSala, now the Offensive Coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Montclair State.
A Bergen Catholic grad mentored for two years each by Fred Stengel, then Nunzio Campanile, Gerst played collegiately at Columbia, then Garden City Community College in Kansas, and later Division II football in Texas. Gerst previously was an assistant coach at Passiac Valley in 2017 under Chet Parlevecchio – the father of the former New Providence coach, Chet Parlevecchio, Jr. – and later spent three years as an offensive assistant at Wayne Valley.
Knapp says he’s “very happy” and “excited that Mike’s on board,” telling Central Jersey Sports Radio he believes he’s “going to do great things this season.”
Click below to hear Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko with new South Brunswick football head coach Mike Gerst:
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