Big Central Conference coaching updates: What’s left to fill with less than two months before camp opens?

It was another year of coaching turnover in the Big Central Conference, whether by coaches not being retained, or stepping down on their own.

Of the 59 schools in the league, 12 will have new head coaches for the upcoming 2026 season. That’s 25 coaching changes in the past two seasons – nearly half the league – after 13 new coaches were hired following the 2024 campaign.

The latest hire was Steven Brown at North Plainfield, whose appointment was approved Monday night by the Board of Education. He’s been the defensive coordinator at Verona for the last two seasons, and also at Elizabeth for girls’ flag football, a Big Central playoff finalist each of the last two seasons.

And that leaves just one position open in the BCC, in Perth Amboy, where William Clark will not be retained after seven seasons as the Panthers’ head coach. His teams were 12-52 in that span, never winning more than three in a season; they went 3-7 in 2021.

Once that hiring is complete, the entire Patriot Silver Division – Amboy, New Providence, AL Johnson, Spotswood, Roselle and Metuchen – will have new head coaches, and be responsible for half the new mentors in the BCC this season.

Here’s a look at the rest of the Big Central Conference schools with new coaches in 2026:

• JFK: One of the early hires, the Mustangs will be led by Anthony Nyers, a Woodbridge grad from across town who was appointed in late February. He most recently was the wide receivers coach and Offensive Coordinator at Westfield under Matt Andzel, and had spent the previous season with Al Chiola at Linden.
• Johnson: Athletic Director Gus Kalikas ran the show last season, and the Crusaders went 7-2 with his son, Jack, at starting quarterback. But this year, the job was given to Mike Ryan, who was approved in late May by the Board of Education, and promoted after spending two years with the Crusaders as an assistant. Ryan has been a head coach at JP Stevens in the past, and was on the Edison staff of Matt Fulham when they won the Central Jersey Group 5 title in 2022.
• Metuchen: Alum Jordan Leitner is gone after going 21-20 in four seasons, including a solid 7-4 campaign in 2024. In steps Middlesex County veteran Joe Riggi, who was a defensive coordinator at JFK in the mid 2010s, sandwiched by a pair of stints as the head coach at JP Stevens, from 2007 to 2009, and again from 2015 to 2019.
• New Providence: The Pioneers kept it in-house after Chert Parlavecchio, Jr., stepped down to take an assistant coaching position at his alma mater, Delbarton. They went with Anthony Conzentino, who played scholastically at Livingston – starring on a 2008 squad then led by current St. Joseph-Metuchen head coach Bill Tracy – and coached running backs, linebackers and special teams the past five years at New Providence.
• Roselle: Tyrone Turner is out after two seasons – and was quickly snapped up by Steven Brown at North Plainfield – and James Roach is in. He’s been director of the Union County Vipers youth football and mentoring organization since 2011 and is a local outreach coordinator, according to his LinkedIn bio.
• South Brunswick: Mike Gerst will now lead the Viking program, coming to Middlesex County after two seasons up at Fort Lee, his first-ever head coaching job. He replaces Ibrahim Halsey, who was 7-12 in two seasons (and now is an assistant at Franklin) while Gerst’s teams went 16-3 in that span an the Super Football Conference’s “Ivy Red” Division, one in which teams aren’t eligible for the playoffs by playing a “relief” schedule aimed at rebuilding. That included a 9-0 campaign last year, the first in over 100 years of Fort Lee football.

• South Hunterdon: 2009 alum Kyle Hart gets the promotion and replaces longtime mentor Toby Jefferis, who was 73-81 over 16 seasons at the school, but 1-7 this past season with a drop in participation numbers. Hart is a phys ed teacher at the Lambertville school and was named Educator of the Year in the district in 2025.
• Spotswood: Andy Steinfeld joined the staff last year as an assistant under Chris Meagher, and working with his son, Matt, who already was on the staff. Now, the former East Brunswick mentor – who once played for and coached under CJSR football analyst Marcus Borden at East Brunswick – gets the keys. Steinfeld was 18-29 in four seasons leading the Bears, but Spotswood has had much more success in recent years, including an 8-2 season last year.
• Voorhees: From the football field, to the broadcast booth, back to the sidelines, Matt Evancho takes over the position after spending the last few years with D11 Sports, a high school sports media website in Pennsylvania, where Evancho had previously been the head coach at Saucon Valley, located just southeast of Bethlehem and on the south side of Route 78 from Lehigh University. He replaces John Hack, who left for a head coaching job in his hometown of Mendham.
• Watchung Hills: Staying in-house, Watchung Hills went with Offensive Coordinator Joe Ascolese after the departure of Rich Suebert. The former New York Giant Super Bowl champion had gone 41-57 in ten seasons, and Ascolese’s promotion will allow continuity in the program, where he’d led the offense since 2019, and also was there from 2005 through 2015.