Author: Mike Pavlichko

by Mike Pavlichko

After nearly a decade, and a half-million dollars donated, Marisa Tufaro Foundation wraps up its charitable mission

Ten years would have been a nice round number.

But so is a half-million dollars.

That’s what the Marisa Tufaro Foundation has donated has donated to families and pediatric patients, charitable organizations and scholarship efforts around the state since its founding nine years ago, on July 30, 2017.

But all good things must come to an end, and the group’s founders have announced the end of the Marisa Tufaro Foundation’s charitable mission.

It was created by longtime Home News Tribune/MyCentralJersey sportswriter Greg Tufaro and his wife, Cyndi, in memory of their daughter, Marisa, who tragically passed away in January of 2017, on what would have been her 14th birthday.

Born with a cardiac defect, she survived six open heart surgeries and a heart transplant, but ultimately and heartbreakingly lost a valiant battle against a rare form of cancer.

Marisa Tufaro. (Photo courtesy Greg Tufaro)

Marisa had been hospitalized for more than two years, and yet was still able to be an honor roll student in Edison public schools and lived a “vibrant life that inspired,” the Tufaros said in a press release.

“We are eternally grateful and appreciative beyond words to all who have donated, volunteered, or hosted a charity event for our nonprofit, which has immensely benefited from the extraordinary kindness of thousands of supporters,” the Tufaros said in the release. “Through the remarkable generosity of others, we have been blessed and privileged to make a profound impact on countless lives. We have also been able to keep alive Marisa’s indomitable spirit and allow her legacy to be one of helping children in need.”

In all that time, there were toy collections, food collections, winter coat collections. There were school and baby supplies, children’s books, and many other physical donations that aren’t even included among the $500,000 raised and distributed.

Fundraisers included the large and small, from lemonade stands to GMC all-star games, and the Marisa Rose Bowl.

Greg Tufaro, who co-founded the Marisa Tufaro Foundation with his wife Cyndi, talks to Team Marisa and Team Rose after the inaugural Marisa Rose Bowl in 2022. (Photo: Mike Pavlichko)

Over the nine years of the Marisa Tufaro Foundation’s existence, nearly 60 high school seniors received $41,500 in scholarship money, and dozens more were able to spend a week at a summer art camp at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers in New Brunswick.

And the foundation gave back to many of the hospitals that treated Marisa, from the Bristol-Myers Squibb Children’s Hospital at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and more.

At home with Marisa Tufaro and the Tufaro family pup, Duncan. (Photo courtesy Greg Tufaro)

The foundation also was recognized as the Edison Chamber of Commerce’s 2024 “Organization of the Year,” was named a “Community Champion” in 2023 by the Metuchen/Edison/Woodbridge/South Amboy YMCA, and was a Hands of Hope Tee Off Against Hunger honoree in 2024 for “dedicated efforts in fostering positive change within the community.”

by Mike Pavlichko

Ben Donaghy leaves North Plainfield to helm Red Devils baseball

When Tom Blackwell stepped down, retiring as Ridge baseball coach at the end of the Spring – going out as North 2, Group 4 state sectional champions – it was more than just the loss of a coach, but of a Red Devil alum who played for the late, great Pete Hall.

His replacement doesn’t fall far from the Ridge tree.

The Board of Education has approved the hire of Ben Donaghy – who spent the last year as head coach at North Plainfield – to take over the program.

Donaghy has more than two decades in coaching under his belt. Before leading the Canucks, he was the head coach at South Hunterdon for two seasons, going 27-21, and he took a North Plainfield program that hadn’t had a double-digit win season in nearly a decade until the year before he arrived – when they went 14-8 – improving them to 18-9, with a playoff win over Matawan in the first round of the state tournament in North 2, Group 3. It was the program’s first state tourney victory since 2011.

But Prior to becoming a head coach, he was Blackwell’s JV coach for three years with the Red Devils, and also coached football. He was the head freshman football coach for four seasons and a varsity assistant, all making him well-connected to the Ridge community.

But the move back to Ridge is a big step up, where the program missed the Somerset County Tournament final in a very competitive field for the first time since 2018, with that five-season streak the second-most all-time since the SCT began play in 1973. The Red Devils also are second all-time in Somerset County titles with seven – only behind Immaculata and their 15 – with its most recent trophy coming in 2022 over Rutgers Prep.

While coaching elsewhere, Donaghy worked at Ridge High School, and still does. He’s a Transition Coordinator, Work-Based Learning Supervisor and a Special Education teacher, working with students with autism and diverse learning needs, including community-based instruction and competitive work-based learning experiences.

Collegiately, Donaghy was a three-year starter at Felician University up in Rutherford, where he was Team MVP his senior year of 2003 and named Team MVP with a .324 batting average, also earning accolades as a Division II All-Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference pick.

Click hear to listen to new Ridge baseball coach Ben Donaghy with Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko.
by Mike Pavlichko

GMC, Somerset County Tournament Basketball history now live on Central Jersey Sports Radio, as website expands new “History” section beyond football to basketball, baseball

When the popular website Gridiron New Jersey shut down in June, along with it went all of its historical data.

Coaches, fans, players – and the media – no longer had access to team schedules and results going as far back as 2003. That was something none of the major media outlets had online, with NJ.com only going back to 2010, and MaxPreps just a few years further back than that. League standings were gone as well.

And then there were the playoff brackets – every bracket from public and non-public/parochial playoffs from their debut in 1974 to the present.

Oh, and Gridiron also ran and released the official NJSIAA UPR playoff standings.

While we can’t do much about that – although we do run our own numbers every season to provide our playoff scenario analysis and host our annual “Playoff Projection Show” on Cutoff Weekend – we decided we’d post our own historical information online in a new “History” section, accessible from our main menu.

Not only did we publish what we had – and research the rest – of football brackets from the full playoff era from 1974 through 2026, we also added a Big Central Conference record book, with team and individual records from the league’s formation in 2020 to the present day.

But more has just come online!

This weekend, we published historical records for the Greater Middlesex Conference and Somerset County Tournament for boys’ and girls’ basketball, as well as the GMC’s predecessor, the Middlesex County Tournament. Included are results from the finals, and a “By the Numbers” breakdown with information on finals appearances, most titles won, etc.

We’ve also added pages on the GMC and Somerset County Tournament in baseball, and eventually, we’ll be adding brackets as well for those sports and basketball. Some are readily available online, and some still need to be researched, but it’s a long and laborious process of looking back through past media coverage online and our own records.

Also important to note: the nature of keeping high school sports records is very varied in terms of, let’s say, attention to detail. Particularly in football, we have noticed many teams not publishing full stats, or discrepancies between multiple sites. (You’d be surprised – or maybe not – how many teams had more passing yards than receiving yards, or vice versa.) Some don’t report stats at all, or just certain categories.

We’re working on it. We believe we’re as accurate as possible, but there are bound to be some errors when you create and publish nearly 900 football playoff brackets alone.

So, if you notice any errors, typos or omissions, please email us at mike@cjsportsradio.com, and we’ll do our best to make the correction as soon as possible!

by Mike Pavlichko

Big Central Conference to kick off 2026 season with 4th annual Media Day at Kean University

Central Jersey Sports Radio will begin its seventh season covering high school football when the Big Central Conference holds its fourth annual Media Day, to be held at the Harwood Arena on the campus of Kean University in union on Wednesday, August 5th.

Note: This is the correct day of the event; a previous version incorrectly listed it as Wednesday, August 6. It is Wednesday, August 5th.

While many teams have been participating in summer workouts – along with working out in the weight room and taking part in 7-on-7s – since school lets out in June, the real work begins Monday, August 10, the first day teams are allowed to have an official practice, per NJSIAA rules.

Of course, with the start of preseason camp, that means Central Jersey Sports Radio high school football analyst Marcus Borden – returning for his fourth season with CJSR – will head out on the 2026 Camp Caravan, which he’s been doing for over a decade now.

Just like last season, Borden will tease each camp’s coverage on Twitter/X.  You can follow Marcus here. We’ll have more details on his first-week Camp Caravan itinerary on Sunday, August 9, and you can find all that content on cjsportsradio.com, with links to Camp Caravan videos, all of which will be published on our Central Jersey Sports Radio YouTube channel, under the 2026 Camp Caravan playlist.

Here are links to Borden’s past Camp Caravan and Game Coverage on YouTube:

Over the next few weeks, we’ll have more and more stories on the upcoming season.  Besides looking at some of the key teams, we’ll take a closer look at the season with:

  • Our 2025 High School Football Broadcast Schedule
  • 2025 Big Central Conference Divisional Previews
  • Our preseason CJSR Top Ten
  • Marcus Borden’s preseason rankings and All-BCC Preseason Teams
  • Early playoff look and projections for each team’s “minimum wins”
  • Strength of Schedule breakdowns for the entire league and divisions
  • Coaching changes for the upcoming season
  • Ten Questions for the upcoming season
  • Much, much more

by Mike Pavlichko

Revisiting the matching of a playoff-era Middlesex County shutout record: another Aquinas team had a similar season before Piscataway

With the closure of Gridiron New Jersey, our work to publish the entire collection of NJSIAA playoff brackets from 1974 to the present left us a lot of research to be done. But we learned a lot about the history of the playoffs in the process. And one of them pertained to an incredible feat by the St. Thomas Aquinas football team in 2021 under the late Brian Meeney.

That much we knew already.

It was the first full year of Big Central Conference play, which should have been 2020 except for a global pandemic. And STA matched a feat many thought they wouldn’t see challenged for a while.

The Trojansset a new school record with seven shutouts, and nearly went the whole regular season without giving up a single point. That tied the mark of seven Piscataway had in its 2004 season, the second under Dan Higgins, who’s now in his 22nd season as the Chiefs’ head coach, second only to Rich Marchesi of South River, entering his 39th year.

We knew that, too.

Not counting a forfeit win over South River, St. Thomas started with a modest 6-0 win over Woodstown in its September 3 opener. Then then blew out Roselle, Spotswood and Johnson by a combined 148-0. And after South River had to give up their October second game against Aquinas, they pitched three more shutouts, 51-0 over Belvidere, 41-0 over Middlesex and 59-0 over Governor Livingston before picking up a 12-9 win over Delaware Valley in their regular season finale, allowing their first points of the season on a second quarter touchdown.

While it wasn’t the same level of competition, Piscataway had seven shutouts on its ledger in 2024, a team that had some tremendous players, and that’s an understatement. That Chiefs’ team went 12-0, won the Central Jersey Group 4 title, and had future NFL first round draft picks Kyle Wilson, Malcolm Jenkins and Anthony Davis.

And while seven other Middlesex County teams had seven shutouts in a season – all before the playoff era – we also noticed that St. Thomas – then known as Bishop Ahr – had a six-shutout season in the 1980s.

In fact, it was 1984, and their sixth shutout came in the Parochial South A title game, as the fourth-seeded Trojans upset second-seed Holy Cross of Delran, 12-0. That title was their first of three straight, the only ones the program has won in the history of the North Edison parochial school.

That game saw a scoreless first half until Ahr broke through, with the help of its defense – which held Notre Dame in the previous round to six first downs – and just three in the first three quarters. Head coach Tony Aschettino said he was “confident our defense would hold up and (I) told myself we’d get a break or two.”

That they did, as junior defensive back Tom Simon recovered a fumble on the Holy Cross 28, and the ensuing offensive possession got a 38-yard field goal from Tom Withke. Pressure defense on a punt resulted in great field position, and a 42-yard touchdown drive capped by a three-yard run by Joe McLaughlin. And a third score came from Alexis Greaves on a 19-yard run after Ahr got the ball of a Simon interception at the Holy Cross 47.

That team could run the ball, as Graves led the team with 1,121 yards and McLaughlin chipped in 1,005, the first time the Trojan program had two thousand-yard rushers in a single season.

That team finished 10-1, with five regular season shutouts, along with both playoff victories. While we don’t have the chronological order, the ranks of the whitewashed included:

  • Carteret, 35-0
  • North Brunswick, 28-0
  • South Brunswick, 21-0
  • Newark-West Side, 24-0
  • Notre Dame, 30-0 (Parochial South A First Round/Semifinals)
  • Holy Cross, 17-0 (Parochial South A Final)

by Mike Pavlichko

Former North Brunswick, Rutgers standout pitcher Zack Konstantinovsky picked in MLB Draft by Washington Nationals

Zack Konstantinovsky – a two-time Central Jersey Sports Radio Player of the Year at North Brunswick and standout at Rutgers – has been selected in the 2026 Major League Baseball Draft by the Washington Nationals.

“Zack K,” as he’s often called, was dominant on the mound as a Raider. In ten starts his senior season, he give up just eight runs, five earned, and fanned 88 – but he hit .469 and hit eight home runs. He was even more overpowering his junior year, striking out 120 hitters while walking just two, and allowing only seven earned runs in 67 innings pitched.

At Rutgers this past season, he was 4-5, with a 5.48 ERA, and was often the Friday starter in Big Ten weekend sets for Steve Owens’ club.

Konstantinovsky was chosen Sunday at 406 overall, in the 14th round by the Nats, and he joins teammate and former Franklin standout Peyton Bonds as MLB picks in 2026. Bonds – who is Barry Bonds’ nephew and the godson of Bobby Bonds – hit .352 with 29 RBIs and six home runs, while also stealing 13 bases for the Scarlet Knights this past season. He hit eight doubles and scored 31 runs.

That makes it 13 Rutgers baseball players to be drafted in the last five seasons under head coach Steve Owens.

Click here to listen to Zack Konstantinovsky talk with Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko in his first interview since being drafted by the Nationals in the 2026 MLB Draft.

Many eyes were on Passaic Tech catcher Mickey Gilligan – who has a cannon for an arm and is a big-time slugger, too – but he went undrafted, and announced Sunday on social media he’s looking forward to playing at Rutgers, where he had previously been committed.

by Mike Pavlichko

Former Franklin, Rutgers standout Peyton Bonds picked by San Francisco in third round of MLB Draft; will other area players be chosen?

With the 90th pick overall, in the third round of the 2026 Major League Baseball Draft, the San Francisco Giants take…

… former Franklin standout and Rutgers star Peyton Bonds.

A junior this past season, Bonds – who is Barry Bonds’ nephew and the godson of Bobby Bonds – hit .352 with 29 RBIs and six home runs, while also stealing 13 bases. He hit eight doubles and scored 31 runs.

The 12th Scarlet Knight to be drafted in the last five seasons under head coach Steve Owens, he’s also the fourth to be taken by the Giants all-time. The others are Bonds’ former teammate Trevor Cohen in the third round last year, Bill Malloy in the sixth round in 1996, and Robert Kenney in the 38th round in 1967.

The Major League Baseball Draft is being held in Philadelphia this weekend, with Day One on Saturday and Day Two wrapping up the event on Sunday.

Bonds hails from Somerset and hit .429 across three varsity seasons for the Warriors, with 21 runs batted in.

More to come?

In Saturday’s first four rounds, Bonds was the only New Jersey player drafted, though several are eligible. High school players are eligible immediately after graduation, as long as they have not yet enrolled in college. Once they do, they’re no eligible again until after their junior year, unless they turn 21 by August 1.

But several others are eligible, and one of the top prospects among them are is Alex Weingartner of St. Augustine Prep down in South Jersey. A Penn State commit, he can hit 94 to 96 mph on the mound, but has also been billed as a solid position player, with excellent speed.

Another is Mickey Gilligan, the outstanding catcher with a cannon for an arm – and a bat to match – out of Passaic Tech in Wayne. He’s also a Rutgers commit.

Immaculata’s Ryan Auten threw a complete-game no-hitter against Franklin in the Somerset County Tournament semifinals on May 19, 2025. (Photo: Alec Crouthamel)

From the Central Jersey Sports Radio coverage area, Ryan Auten of Immaculata is eligible. The Somerset County Player of the Year spent two years with the Spartans – transferring in from Delaware Valley – and went 7-4 this season with a 0.74 ERA, while striking out 114 and allowing just a dozen walks. He surrendered just six runs all season, and is committed to Wake Forest.

North Brunswick’s Zack Konstantinovsky pitches in the GMC Tournament final on May 21, 2023 at Ray Cipperly Field in East Brunswick. (Photo: MIke Pavlichko)

And filling both bills, Rutgers fourth-year junior Zack Konstantinovsky – a North Brunswick alum – also is eligible. He was a two-time CJSR GMC Player of the Year, honored after his junior and senior seasons with the Raiders, in 2022 and 2023. Not only could he pitch – in ten starts his senior season, he give up just eight runs, five earned, and fanned 88 – but he hit .469 and hit eight home runs.

by Mike Pavlichko

Late-hired Big Central coaches may need honeymoon period as they get to know their teams, assemble staffs with little time before camp

By the time the Fourth of July rolled around, eleven new football coaches had already been hired in the Big Central Conference for 2025, with one – Perth Amboy – on the way.

That makes 25 coaching changes in the league in the last two seasons alone. And after the Panthers’ new skipper Evan Baubles got approved by the Board of Education this past Thursday, the 12th coach was in place, but there was to be one more, although it actually had happened earlier.

Phlip McGuane stepped down just a few weeks ago at Dunellen, a year after replacing Dave DeNapoli, the Destroyers’ mentor for the previous 29 seasons. In his place will be the new Coordinator of Athletics, Kyle Baach, in his first head coaching job.

That’s 13 coaching changes for 2026, with 26 of 59 schools changing leaders in the past two seasons.

Some happen early. Andy Steinfeld at Spotswood was one of the first, getting hired in January. So was Anthony Nyers, with the Woodbridge alum getting hired across town at JFK in February. Even a hire like Joe Ascolese at Watchung Hills in April wouldn’t be considered terribly late, since he was already the Offensive Coordinator and in the program for nearly two decades over two different stretches.

But some happen much later, like Baubles, Baach, and North Plainfield’s Steven Brown, who was hired in June to replace Derrick Eatman, who’s now at Franklin as an assistant to Blair Wilson.

“If I was hired July 9th, I don’t know if I’m going to have anyone I want coaching with me,” said Marcus Borden on this week’s special edition of our “Gameday” podcast on Central Jersey Sports Radio. “When I came into East Brunswick, I was hired in the Spring, but I was not able to get to hire any of the asisstants that I might want.”

When he was hired at East Brunswick, Borden says he “took the staff that’s there,” and after that “made some adjustments accordingly” after that first season.

But there’s also the aspect of working with your players – when allowed to by NJSIAA rule – as well as just the simple matter of being in the same building with them, keeping an eye on them, developing a rapport, even down to making sure off-season weight training is going the way you want it to.

There were 13 new coaches in the Big Central Conference in 2025, and at least five were hired in May or later. The latest was Geoff Chrisman, who was already a teacher at New Brunswick, but named football coach in June. The program had not won a game since 2021 under two different coaches, and while the team lost its first nine games, they picked up a 36-0 win over West Windsor-Plainsboro South in their finale on November 29th.

And that was progress.

McGuane was a late hire in May, but Dunellen had been 0-10 the year before (after a 5-4 2023) and the Destroyers went 0-9 in 2025, with a new head coach for 2026. Issa-Abdul Quddus took over at Hillside in May, and went 5-5 after a 6-3 season the year before under Barris Grant. Linden was 4-6 in Al Chiola’s last season, and Mark Ciccotelli went 3-5 in his first season after being hired in May. Ridge fell a bit, but had some big graduation losses, as Jeff Sutherland’s squad went 5-4 following an 8-2 season in 2024 for Andy West; Sutherland – a Ridge alum – had already been the program’s Defensive Coordinator.

In 2024, the stunning resignation of Joe LaSala at Woodbridge in late March set off a coaching carousel that spread into June. Joe Goerge left South Brunswick to lead the Barrons and was appointed in April, Ebrahim Halsey left Roselle to take the Vikings’ post in June, and Tyrone Turner was hired at Roselle in July.

Goegre, of course, walked into a great situation at Woodbridge, with a roster packed with standouts including the Anderson brothers – QB Derek, WR Bryan – and others like Josh Allen and Jahmir Beal. Thye went 10-1 in 2024, and a still-solid 8-3 last season.

But after South Brunswick went 5-5 in Gorge’s final season in Monmouth Junction, Halsey went just 3-6 in 2024 before improving by one win in 2025. And Turner – hired only about a month before preseason camp was set to begin – managed to go 4-7 after a 4-6 season in Halsey’s last campaign, but was not brought back for ’26 after a 2-9 season in 2025.

Manville head coach Dave Markowitch talks to his team after the Mustangs’ first-ever playoff win, a 35-0 victory over Asbury Park in Central Jersey Group 1 action at Ned Panfile Stadium in Manville on October 31, 2025. (Photo: Mike Pavlichko)

Dave Markowitch was another one: Hired in June 2024 by Manville, he was already in the program over a decade, working under Pat Gorbatuk, who became the Athletic Director. And he just kept on winning, even bringing the program its first-ever playoff win this season. They’re 17-4 over the past two seasons.

Late hires seem to work better when it’s been someone already in the program. And early hires are no guarantee. But that may not be anyone’s fault; sometimes the talent or numbers just aren’t there in enough quantities to be successful on a regular basis.

Look how long it took Highland Park to snap their 51-game losing streak in 2023. That started long before Shawn Harrison took over the program. Early or not, he worked on recruiting kids in the hallways and putting together flag football in town just to get kids brought up to speed on the basics, so when the got to be an Owl, they had a solid background in the concepts of the game.

Not only did the Owls snap a 51-game, seven-year, 2,534-game losing streak, in their final game of the season, finishing 1-9 in 2023, but they went 6-3 the following season. Sometimes, that one win is all you need.

Sometimes, you just need a little more time, whether you’re hired right after the last season ends, or a month before camp opens.

by Mike Pavlichko

Not so fast: One more Big Central hire, as new Dunellen AD Kyle Baach takes over Destroyers’ football program

Longtime Dunellen football coach Dave DeNapoli retired after the 2024 season – his 29th with the Destroyers – then handed the keys to veteran mentor Phlip McGuane before he retired as Coordinator of Athletics this past April.

McGuane held both roles for a few months but now has ceded them to Kyle Baach, a native of Basking Ridge, who will be a head coach for the first time.

Baach was living in South Carolina with his wife and young child when they decided they wanted to be back in Central Jersey and closer to their families, and he started looking for jobs. That’s when he saw a post about Dunellen.

Baach says while interviewing with the administration, he learned the football job could be on the table, as McGuane wasn’t sure he’d want to return. Eventually, that turned out to be the case, and Baach was hired for both positions.

McGuane, reached Friday, said “I think we have made a good move for athletics,” adding it was his idea.

“Bottom line is I did what I thought was best for the kids and the overall program, and the administration agreed.”

The 32-year-old Baach played at Ridge for Tony Mottola his freshman season, then Bill Tracy his final three, though he was injured his senior year.

After attending Coastal Carolina University – where he was a recruiting intern and assistant to the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, but didn’t play – he spent a year under Tracy as an assistant in 2019, then moved back down to South Carolina where he coached at Carvers Bay in the town of Hemingway, about 30 miles west of Myrtle Beach, the alma mater of Clifton, Kwame, Robert and Clayton Geathers, all of whom reached the NFL.

McGuane’s Destroyers – one of the smallest programs in one of the smallest high schools in the state – went 0-9 last season and has lost 20 straight dating back to a first-round playoff loss in 2023, in which the team went 5-4 in the next to last season under DeNapoli.

Central Jersey Sports Radio broadcast that season’s opener, a convincing 18-7 home win over Dayton.

Click below to listen to new Dunellen Cooridnator of Athletics and football coach Kyle Baach talk with Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko:

by Mike Pavlichko

Perth Amboy hires Wall alum, ’25 Carteret assistant Evan Baubles to rejuvenate football program

The Perth Amboy Board of Education has approved a new coach for the Panthers’ football program, hiring Evan Baubles with an eye toward elevating the struggling program over the next few years.

Baubles – who was approved at Thursday afternoon’s meeting – is a guidance counselor at South Amboy High School for juniors and seniors, and spent the past year as an assistant at Carteret under Kevin Freeman. He met Freeman while the two were at Lakewood, where Baubles spent nearly two decades, before a year at Hightstown and another with the Ramblers.

The 42-year-old Baubles is a graduate of Wall Township High School, and was a three-sport athlete there, playing football, basketball and baseball, the last of which may have been his best sport. He was drafted out of high school, but attended Santa Fe Community college to avoid the requirement that D1 baseball players spend three years in school before being drafted again; Santa Fe allowed him to be eligible after one year if he wished.

But, he had arm trouble almost immediately and was unable to play his freshman year. After getting it taken care of, the same problems came back his sophomore year, effectively ending his career.

Then, in June of 2006, he was involved in a horrific car crash on I-95 in Virginia, when a vehicle he was riding in struck construction equipment on the side of the road. The crash took the life of his father, Peter, who was driving, and his younger brother, Colin. He suffered serious injuries in the crash, but eventually made a full recovery.

Baubles will take over a Perth Amboy program that was 10-45 in in six seasons under William Clark, never winning more than three games in a season; they were 3-7 in 2021.

Click below to hear new Perth Amboy football coach Evan Baubles talk with Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko:

Freeman glowingly praised Baubles – the two first met at Lakewood nearly 15 years ago – when reached this week by Central Jersey Sports Radio.

“He’s had a tireless effort to improve player performance while increasing his overall knowledge of the game,” Freeman said. “He gets the kids to play for him. He wants to make the greatest impact possible on players through this game.”

Freeman says they’ll miss him in Carteret.

“We intertwine our frosh with the varsity for practice. We were down a coach one day and I turn around and he has the entire frosh team doing fundamental drills,” Freeman said. “He is a true old-school football coach who doesn’t let a minute waste when he’s on that field. I’m very excited for him.

While it’s certainly later in the game that most districts will hire their head coaches, typically done in January or February, Freeman says Baubles will “put them in a good position to compete.”