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)
