Author: Mike Pavlichko

by Mike Pavlichko

Graduation losses? Colonia always seems to reload, and looks to do the same in 2026

Post-COVID, the Colonia football program has had just one sub-.500 season, and that’s a remarkable feat considering.

In 2021, QB Josh Oluremi led the Patriots – and Middlesex County – in rushing with 1,595 yards on a team that went 8-3. They went 8-2 the next year.

In 2023, they lost QB Jaeden Jones, who also led the team and county in rushing with 1,661 yards. That team went 5-5, and they next year, they were a fairly comparable 4-6, and still made the playoffs.

The 2024 squad parlayed that experience into a 7-4 campaign a year ago, bolstered by senior QB Dylan Chiera’s Big Central single-season record 2,436 yards (along with 23 touchdowns and just three INTs), while connecting a whopping 101 times with senior R.J. Wortman, who had more catches than anyone else in New Jersey last year en route to setting his own BCC single-season mark.

But both are gone, and now it’s time for new players to step up.

Finding them will be the task for head coach Tom Roarty, now going into his 14th season as head coach.

Brayden Hammond will get the call at QB, Chiera’s understudy the last few years, and Roarty says this is his time to “make his mark.” He’ll likely hand off a lot to Kyle Bell, a junior who led the Patriots in rushing last year, with 434 yards and five touchdowns on a pass-heavy team.

On the defensive side, A.J. Reinoso is a third-year starter as a senior linebacker, and will be one of the team’s top defenders. A year ago, he had two sacks and eight tackles for loss, along with a forced fumble and a recovery. Jason Eyetan also had a pair of sacks and 12 TFLs in 2025 on the defensive line, and is back for his senior season as well. But Roarty says the secondary is young and will need to develop.

No doubt, Colonia has been a consistent program due to the effort his players put in. That’s what they can control. Now, they will hope that translates to wins on the field.

Click below to learn more about the Colonia Patriots in 2026 from head coach Tom Roarty, senior QB Brayden Hammond and senior LB A.J. Reinoso with Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko at Big Central Conference Media Day:

by Mike Pavlichko

Marcus Borden’s Camp Caravan 2026: St. Thomas Aquinas brings back top-flight talent, senior leaders

Week One of high school football preseason camp has wrapped up in New Jersey, and Central Jersey Sports Radio analyst Marcus Borden finishes the first week of Camp Caravan 2026 – where he’ll visit more than a dozen Big Central Conference schools – with a trip to North Edison to see St. Thomas Aquinas.

Watch Borden’s full coverage below, including clips from camp, and interviews with second-year Trojans head coach Shamir Bearfield, along with seniors Jaylen Frias (LB), Sebastian Azofeifa (OT/DT), Tristan Bester (WR/DB) and junior Zymere Weaver (QB).

Click below to watch Marcus Borden’s Camp Caravan visit to St. Thomas Aquinas!

by Mike Pavlichko

Marcus Borden’s Camp Caravan 2026: After breaking skid, New Brunswick hungry for more wins

As preseason football camp nears the end of its first week in New Jersey , Central Jersey Sports Radio analyst Marcus Borden continues Camp Caravan 2026 – where he’ll visit more than a dozen Big Central Conference schools – with a trip to New Brunswick to see the Zebras.

Watch Borden’s full coverage below, including clips from camp, and interviews with second-year Zebras head coach Geoff Chrisman, along with senior Alan Rodriguez (OT/DT/LS), juniors Ervin Muñoz-Juares (RB/LB) and Arion Lugo-James (OT/DT), and sophomore Arisniel Matos-Sánchez (RB/DB/KR).

Click below to watch Marcus Borden’s Camp Caravan visit to New Brunswick!

by Mike Pavlichko

Time for a reset: North Brunswick will get back to fundamentals in effort to right Raiders’ ship

It wasn’t that long ago the North Brunswick football team was thriving, winning seven, eight, nine games a year on a regular basis, even going 7-1 during the COVID-shortened 2020 season, with no significant dropoff the next year like so many teams faced.

But the last two years have been struggles, going 2-7 in 2024, and 0-9 last season, their first winless campaign since 1998, the last of three that decade.

And while the nature of high school sports is often cyclical – something veteran head coach Mike Cipot had previously managed to avoid – sometimes it takes hold anyway. But Cipot isn’t exactly buying that either.

“We’ve got to focus on the fundamentals,” Cipot told Central Jersey Sports Radio at Big Central Media Day. “We’ve got to get back to what we do best.”

But Cipot also noticed that last year’s team lacked the type of speed they had when in the program’s better years. That speed seems more evident this off season, with many guys having had a successful track season.

While senior QB Zach Cipot – the head coach’s nephew – is gone after a thousand-yard passing season, top receiver Sal Fama-Linn (53 catches, 625 yards, 2 TD) is back, while Kaji Brown and Jasiah Hogans both saw experience behind center last season. But the Raiders will want more from their run game, which only gained 571 yards as a team in 2025.

The defense also will need to be shored up after allowing nearly 40 points a game last season. If the “back to fundamentals” approach works – think proper tackling technique – it could be a better year for the Raiders.

There’s certainly work to do, but for Cipot, it’s not without precedent. Hired in April of 2017, he took a team that was 1-9 the year prior – and hadn’t won more than two games in any of the previous five seasons – and got them to 6-4, then 10-2 in 2018 with a trip to the Central Jersey Group 5 final.

It’s been done before. The Raiders just need to do it again.

Click below to learn more about the North Brunswick Raiders in 2026 from head coach Mike Cipot, senior WR/DB Sal Fama-Linn and senior two-way lineman Tomi Osho with Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko at Big Central Conference Media Day:

by Mike Pavlichko

In rugged American Silver, Ridge looks to bounce back in Year Two under Sutherland with more experienced group

Jeff Sutherland knew his Ridge football team would be young in 2025, and to some degree, it showed in their 5-4 record.

They began the year 1-2 with losses to St. Joseph-Metuchen and Phillipsburg, but then won four straight – including over eventual North 2, Group 5 champion Bridgewater-Raritan – before dropping their regular season finale to Westfield, and losing to Colonia in the opening round of the state playoffs.

Much of that young group is back, and now, the second-year head coach expects that experience to pay off in 2026.

While Sutherland will have to find a new quarterback to replace Sawyer Paul, who threw for 563 yards and six touchdowns, Tristan Frank attempted 33 passes last year as a junior is the leading candidate to start. Top runningback Nick Pfenning (692 yards, 5 TDs) graduates, but C.J. Griffith – right behind him with 688 yards and four touchdowns on 103 carries – returns for his senior year. And six players who caught passes last year return.

Defensive lineman Greg Brown – who also plays tight end and is committed to Bucknell – is back for his senior year after logging 3 1/2 sacks and six TFLs a year ago; he also had a pick for a touchdown.

The schedule allows little in the way of breathing room. The Red Devils open with Sayreville in Week One, the close the regular season with sectional finalist Old Bridge, and in between have two state sectional champs from 2025: Bridgewater-Raritan on the road, and Phillipsburg at home, just two weeks apart, with a crossover against an electric Elizabeth team in between.

Click below to learn more about the Ridge Red Devils in 2026 from head coach Jeff Sutherland with Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko at Big Central Conference Media Day:

by Mike Pavlichko

Marcus Borden’s Camp Caravan 2026: East Brunswick seeks improvement in second year under Zach Gega

Preseason football camp continues around New Jersey this week for the 2026 season, and Central Jersey Sports Radio analyst Marcus Borden continues Camp Caravan 2026 – where he’ll visit more than a dozen Big Central Conference schools – with a trip to East Brunswick to see the Bears.

Watch Borden’s full coverage below, including clips from camp, and interviews with second-year Bears head coach Zach Gega and seniors Sean Christie (QB/FS), Cole Zebro (RB/LB), Brandon Adams (OT/DT) and Nicholas Espindola (TE/LB).

Click below to watch Marcus Borden’s Camp Caravan visit to East Brunswick!

by Mike Pavlichko

Marcus Borden’s Camp Caravan 2026: As always, high expectations at Delaware Valley

Preseason football camp continues around New Jersey this week for the 2026 season, and Central Jersey Sports Radio analyst Marcus Borden continues Camp Caravan 2026 – where he’ll visit more than a dozen Big Central Conference schools – with a trip to Alexandria to see the Delaware Valley Terriers.

Watch Borden’s full coverage below, including clips from camp, and interviews with fourth-year Del Val head coach Ben Ibach; seniors Marcus Gary (G/LB), Ben Culberson (RB/LB), Brayden Costello (WR/DB), Brayden Picardo-Leask (WR/TE/LB), and junior Chase Kraucheunas (QB/FS).

Click below to watch Marcus Borden’s Camp Caravan visit to Delaware Valley!

by Mike Pavlichko

Bernards brings back wealth of talent, loads of optimism for another stellar season in 2026

Junior quarterback Nolan Walsh was a thousand-yard passer last year, throwing 12 touchdowns against just three interceptions.

Top receiver Sean Arcelay – another junior – hauled in 25 passes for 470 yards and five touchdowns. And four of six non-QBs who carried the ball last year return as well.

Then, on the defensive side, the team’s leading tackler, Tyce Hanratty, has 86 tackles last year, along with two sacks, five TFLs, two forced fumbles, one recovery and two picks.

That would be enough to give any team championship aspirations, but for Bernards, hold the phone: there’s more.

Head coach Jon Simoneau says quarterback may be one of their deepest positions, while Walsh has only lost two games as a starter, and is a district wrestling champion to boot. Couple that with Hanratty giving up the chance to run the rock on offense to play up front instead, and Simoneau says, “how can you not be excited?”

That doesn’t mean there won’t be work to do.

Simoneau says one of the biggest priorities for Bernards is developing depth, with a very thin junior class. Never one to sit back, the veteran coach has been scouring the hallways looking for more 11th graders to help the cause. Now it’s time to put them to work.

Bernards also will enter the season with the longest active Big Central Conference win streak, having won 32 straight against BCC opponents. Their last loss in league play came on September 2, 2022, a 35-20 defeat at the hands of Hillside, and they’re just three wins shy of the all-time league mark, held by St. Thomas Aquinas.

If they’re to break it, it would come in Week Four, when they visit Delaware Valley. Should they keep winning, Hillside could be their potential 37th straight BCC win.

Click below to learn more about the Bernards Mountaineers in 2026 from head coach Jon Simoneau and senior offensive lineman/middle linebacker Tyce Hanratty with Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko at Big Central Conference Media Day:

by Mike Pavlichko

Back up to Group 5 for 2026, Phillipsburg hardly bats an eye, returning major talent as Stateliners seek third straight state title, and a win over Easton

Every football program in New Jersey has their goals. For many, it’s: win the division, win a sectional title, win a state title.

At Phillipsburg, of course, there’s one more to throw in: Beat Easton.

The last four years have been highly successful for the Stateliners in different ways. In 2022, they beat Easton for the first time in eight seasons, and lost in a Group 5 state sectional final. The next year was the same. In 2024, they moved down to Group 4, and again went to two sectional finals, this time winning both, even going to the Group 4 state final in ’24 – but they also lost to Easton that year, and last season.

So, what will the move to Group 5 bring?

That’s an interesting question, as the Phillipsburg program has decided to opt-out of taking most Big Central Conference crossovers this year.

They have three divisional opponents – Ridge, Bridgewater-Raritan and Hillsborough – while playing crossovers against Hunterdon Central and St. Joseph-Metuchen. But they will open with three straight Pennsylvania opponents, harkening back to their days in the East Penn Conference from 1976 to 1994, before they “came back” to Jersey and joined the Skyland Conference, which allowed them to take part in the state playoffs.

But that’s all side stuff and noise. Something Phillipsburg players ignore when they talk about D.I.G: Discipline, Ignore the Noise and Grit. That’s what allows their team talent – and team unity – to take over.

On the offensive side, Dominic Bracco ran the offense superbly last year as a sophomore. While he threw for just 714 yards, the team ran for over 3,400, led by now-graduated senior Sam Deck (1,530 yards, 23 TDs). But the cupboard is hardly bare. Bracco ran for 255 himself, and there are many others, like senior Shane Moore (75 carries, 451 yards, 1 TD last year), who expects to see an increased load on what should again be a run-heavy team.

Duffy calls him a “typical Phillipsburg runningback” who has “great vision and runs very hard.”

Defensively, the loss of Aedan Hywell – who led the team and was near the top of the Big Central in sacks with 14 1/2 in 2025 – will be a big one, but watch out for guys like rising senior Elijah Montgomery (2 1/2 sacks, 6 TFLs.

Click below to learn more about the Phillipsburg Stateliners in 2026 from head coach Frank Duffy, along with senior runningback Shane Moore, senior TE/DE Donovan Samson and senior two-way lineman Alex Randazzo with Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko at Big Central Conference Media Day:

by Mike Pavlichko

A few personal thoughts on the loss of a great reporter, and an even better man, Greg Tufaro

When Greg Tufaro, the longtime Middlesex County sportswriter, passed away this Monday, the news was a shock to many.

But it really shouldn’t have been. 

Not to say we all expected it.  No one did. 

But that was the point.  There were so many text messages I received from coaches, friends and acquaintances who didn’t even know he was ill.

And that’s the way Greg wanted it, because in his world, nothing was about him.

I truly believe much of that came about from his family, and the battles that his brave daughter Marisa fought all her life, with her father Greg and mother Cyndi alongside her every step of the way.

When Greg and I spoke exactly a week before his passing, when I called him to talk about him ending the charitable mission of the Marisa Tufaro Foundation, founded with his wife Cyndi in memory of their amazing daughter, who died all too young from cancer herself nine years ago, a complication of multiple heart surgeries, his voice was weak and raspy.  He wasn’t comfortable talking about the shutdown. It was too emotional.

That’s the way Greg Tufaro was, because it was never about him.

It was about the Foundation, or the kids and coaches he interviewed for his stories for over 30 years with the Home News, Home News Tribune and MyCentralJersey.

I first met Greg sometime in the late 1990s when he was on the Rutgers beat, and I was a student, covering the Scarlet Knights as well.  We shared dinner once – with my WRSU broadcast partner and our Targum colleagues – out in Portland, Oregon, covering the NCAA Women’s West Regional Final, where the Scarlet Knights clinched their first Final Four berth, beating UAB and Georgia en route to Philadelphia. 

Not a lot of guys would hang out with student reporters.  Greg did.

Later, we crossed paths often on the high school sports scene after I graduated and made the jump over to WCTC in New Brunswick, where I covered football and basketball.

North Brunswick QB Frankie Garbolino accepts the 2023 Marisa Rose Bowl MVP trophy on June 29, 2023 at Nicholas Priscoe Stadium in Woodbridge from (left to right) Cyndi Tufaro, Joe Bellamy of Bellamy & Son Paving, and Greg Tufaro of the Marisa Tufaro Foundation. (Photo: Korbid Thompson)

Greg actually interviewed me once.  It was 2018, and with the help of Piscataway football assistant John Thompson, we had “cracked” the Born Power Index, a new part of the NJSIAA football playoff formula, which was top secret.  We learned it was rewarding teams with better seeds for winning by large margins.  Seeing this injustice, he wanted to cover it, and gave me a ring.

He was so meticulous, didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes.  He read the story back to me and my quotes, too, wanting to make sure he had everything right, down to the letter, and every dot on an i and cross on a t.  It had to be right.

Ask any coach he talked to and they’ll tell you the same kind of story.

That’s how Greg was.

Another time, I don’t remember if it was before or after that, we had a Friday night football show for a couple of seasons on WCTC called “Friday Night Football USA,” an offshoot of the long running Saturday show we did after Rutgers games.

The topic was a coach who got DQd for leaving the bench area to break up a scuffle.  Now it was my turn to interview Greg, and I got him on the air live to talk about it.  And his observation was that the officials could have handled it better, because the coach was not the problem, but rather trying to get his kids out of it.  The officials didn’t have to write him up, but they did.  It was great radio.

Then I headed off to cover a game, as a reporter, to get a story and tape for the next day’s show.  I got to the sideline, and my phone rang.  It was Greg.

Greg Tufaro (right) and his wife Cyndi at one of many charity events supported by the Marisa Tufaro Foundation. (Photo courtesy Marcus Borden)

“Mike, I gotta to apologize, I feel awful…” and he went into the most rapid-fire I-dont-even-know-what-to-call-it about how he felt like he threw the officials under the bus, these are good people, who am I to criticize? What if they heard me in the car on their way to a game, I feel terrible, etc., etc.  It took a couple of possessions as the game played out in front of me to talk him down.

“Greg,” I told him.  “You did nothing wrong.  You told me what you saw and gave your opinion.  That’s why I had you on.  Because you’re respected.  Don’t worry about it.”

After about ten minutes of back and forth, he took a deep breath, and I promised him it would be okay.  And it was.

That’s how Greg was.

When I started Central Jersey Sports Radio, he was so supportive of our venture, even though we might be competing for stories.  Told me this was a great thing I was doing.  I don’t tell a lot of people that.  Probably because of how he rubbed off on me.

Even when he got out of the sports reporting business and went to work with his good friend, Senator Patrick Diegnan of South Plainfield, we spoke occasionally. 

Mostly, I’d ask him advice.  How he’d handle something.  Should I even write this?  Am I on the right track? He’d compliment my work. 

I was a radio guy, but now I was writing more than I ever imagined.  I took it to heart.  Coming from him, it really and truly meant the world. 

The amount of people Greg Tufaro has touched, influenced, mentored, and helped, whether in sports writing, investigative journalism, with the Foundation, or in his legislative work is beyond even what you and I all know, and will ever know.

Because that was Greg Tufaro.  He wouldn’t tell you what he did, he just did it.

He didn’t ask for the honors, even though he was honored often.

He just did what was right.

Because that’s how Greg was.

Our deepest condolences to Greg’s wife Cyndi, his family, friends and colleagues.

Details on services for Greg Tufaro…

Relatives and friends may call from 1:00 – 5:00 PM on August 16th at the Costello-Runyon Funeral Home, 568 Middlesex Ave. (Route 27), Metuchen. A Mass of Christian Burial will be held at 10:15 AM on August 17th at The Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi, 548 Main St., Metuchen. Interment will follow at Hillside Cemetery, 52 Lincoln Ave., Metuchen.