Hitting a major milestone in any high school sport is a big deal.
Often, the game will stop, the ball will come out of play, and there are balloons and photo ops, then the game goes on.
For Grant Lorentzen, who’s just graduated from JFK in Iselin last week, he hit key milestones in not just one, nor two, but three high school sports.
- In football, he was one of the top receivers in the state this year, with 55 catches for 1,221 yards, and 22 touchdowns, seven shy of the all-time state record. In three varsity seasons, he caught 149 passes for 2,470 yards and 34 scores.
- In basketball, he became one of the few 1,000-point scorers in school history, finishing a four-year varsity career with 1,246 points, 78 from beyond the arc. And he was reasonably close to the program’s all-time leader, Jay Jorgenson (1974), who scored 1,403 in his career.
- And in baseball, he finished his dual career as a pitcher and hitter, reaching the 100-hit and 200-strikeout plateaus. Lorentzen had 102 hits over four years on the varsity squad, while fanning 220 hitters across four varsity seasons.
In an era where more and more student-athletes are specializing – playing just one sport, and then training the rest of the year in that sport – Lorentzen is a throwback, but also an example.
Lorentzen says his coaches always supported him playing multiple sports, so much so that he will even get to do it in college, where he’ll attend The College of New Jersey. First recruited by their baseball coach, he told them right from the get-go that he also wanted to play football. So, they worked out a schedule, and the rest is just future history.
Particularly with pitchers, many believe throwing year-round leaves a teenager more vulnerable to injury. A number of GMC hurlers didn’t make it through the entire 2026 season this spring. But Lorentzen managed to play eleven varsity seasons – and pitched – across four years and three sports at JFK.
Many coaches encourage the practice, and would rather see them play another sport at their school than be out of the building, playing travel ball.
And he still had the time to do some training in the off-season with Elite QB football training academy, under the tutelage of Matt Bastardi. He was often featured in Elite QB’s “Elite Performer of the Week” segment on Central Jersey Sports Radio.
Lorentzen may not be a trailblazer. Many still play multiple sports. But he’s the perfect example of someone who not just played all three, but was damn good at all of them.
Click below to hear JFK grad Grant Lorentzen talk with Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko about being a three-sport athlete, and his future at The College of New Jersey:
