Highland Park’s amazing season continues with big shutout of Brearley, 35-0

Coming into Friday night’s penultimate regular season home game of the 2026 season, the Highland Park football team was staring down the barrel of clearly its toughest two-game stretch of the year: a home game against 5-1 Brearley, and a road game at Dayton, which is 4-2 heading into Saturday’s tilt at South River.

As for the first test, the Owls passed with flying colors.

They scored all kinds of ways, and the defense was in the same lock-down mode it’s been all season, as Highland Park came up with a 35-0 victory over the Bears to remain undefeated (7-0), potentially setting up a game for the division title next week in Union County.

That defense has allowed six points all season. The only other seven points they surrendered all year came on offense, on an interception for a touchdown.

Marcus Smith scored twice, on 12- and two-yard touchdown runs, rushing for 62 yards on nine carries while throwing for 59. Jacob Quiros scored on a ten-yard touchdown run and a fumble recovery in the end zone. And A.J. Lee had a 25-yard pick-six in the third quarter.

But perhaps most impressively, against a team that had been scoring 31 points per game – and 41 a game in their last three – the Owls shut them out completely. In fact, their defense outscored the Bears 7-0, thanks to Lee’s interception for a touchdown.

Highland Park is now 4-0 in the Freedom Gold, with Dayton 3-0, but still with South River on the schedule Saturday. Should they Bulldogs win that game, it’ll be down to next week’s matchup in Springfield to determine the Freedom Gold champion.

Brearley falls to 5-2 with the loss, 2-2 in the Freedom Gold, with losses to Highland Park and Dayton.

Click below to hear Highland park head coach Shawn Harrison talk about the Brearley win with Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko: