Hall of Fame – Central Jersey Sports Radio

When Dan Higgins – the longtime head football coach at Piscataway High School – was inducted into the New Jersey Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame this weekend, the honor may have given Piscataway a quite distinct one.

It’s unknown (though we’ll try and dig to find out) whether anyone else has had three consecutive Hall of Fame coaches spanning 55 years in any other program in New Jersey, but that’s what Piscataway now has.

Higgins was inducted along with three others – while Montgomery’s Zoran Milich, who stepped down as coach earlier this year, was given the Dr. John Bateman Lifetime Achievement Award – Sunday afternoon at the Phil Simms North/South All-Star Classic at Kean University in Union.

Higgins’ late father, Tom, was Piscataway’s coach from 1970 through 1989, and Dan was a waterboy for him before he was even a teenager. The senior Higgins was inducted in 2001. Joe Kuronyi succeeded him, coaching from 1990 through 2002, and was enshrined in 2010. Now Higgins, who has been coach since 2003, is in the Hall of Fame with them.

*Longtime Piscataway football coach Dan Higgins was inducted into the NJFCA Hall of Fame Saturday at the Phil Simms North/South All-Star Classic at Kean University in Union. (Graphic by John Thompson)*

That means that for all but eleven years of Piscataway football’s 66-year history on the gridiron, they were led by a Hall of Fame coach.

How many schools can claim that?

Higgins is 173-58 in 21 seasons (Piscataway sat out fall sports in 2020 due to COVID) and has won seven state titles, with ten championship games berths. (New Jersey didn’t start playing to group champions until 2022.) Koronyi won a title in 2002, and Tom Higgins won championships in 1974 – the first year of the playoff era – and 1981. Dan Higgins’ 2018 team won the inaugural North Group 5 NJSIAA “regional bowl” championship, beating Ridgewood at MetLife Stadium.

Zoran Milich – who founded the Montgomery program more than two decades ago, and just stepped down in the off-season – was given the John Bateman Lifetime Achievement Award. Milich won his 100th game this past season, and finishes his tenure at the helm of the Cougar program with a record of 104-121-1. His longtime offensive coordinator, Sean Carty, now is leading the program.

Former longtime Montgomery football coach Zoran Milich was honored with the Dr. John Bateman Lifetime Achievement Award by the NJFCA at the Phil Simms North/South All-Star Classic on Sunday at Kean University in Union. (Source: @FootballMonty on Twitter)

Click here to read out story on Milich from late-January, including a one-on-one interview.

Also inducted into the NJFCA Hall of Fame along with Higgins were:

Longtime Morris County coach Cosmo LoRusso, who coached at Roxbury, Sussex Tech and Pequannock
Nine-time state champion Joe Rotondo, who was head coach at Union City and has been a part of nine state champions, now an offensive line coach at St. Peter’s Prep
Longtime Cranford and AL Johnson coordinator Joe Hubert

Click below to hear Dan Higgins talk with Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko about his induction into the NJFCA Hall of Fame, and his long career with the Chiefs’ program:

What about the game?

The South beat the North 19-18, with the event now split 21-21 with two ties. And two Big Central standouts were critical in the win. Derek Anderson of Woodbridge won the Offensive MVP award, while his twin brother Brian was the Defensive MVP. Both will be playing at West Chester in the fall.

The most decorated girls basketball player and the most successful baseball team in school history – along with its star pitcher – were among several inductees into the Spotswood Athletics Hall of Fame this past weekend.

Beth Dickinson Cipot (then known as Beth Dickinson) is the school’s all-time leading scorer in girls’ or boys’ basketball, while the 2007 Charger baseball team won every possible title it could: GMC Blue Division, GMC Tournament, Central Jersey Group 2 and the statewide Group 2 title.

Dickinson scored 2,100 points in her career, and is the only player on either side to pass the 2,000-point mark, She captained the 19989-99 team that won the Central Jersey Group 1 title, and was a three-time all-county player in the Star-Ledger and Home News Tribune, ultimately making third-team All Group 1 by the Ledger and Associated Press.

She played collegiately at St. Peter’s and Fordham, where she was an All-Academic Atlantic Ten selection in 2004, and later coached at the Bronx school, as well as Georgetown from 2004 to 2007.

Click below to listen to Mike Pavlichko talk with Spotswood Athletics Hall of Fame Class of 2022 Inductee Beth Dickinson:

Editors’ Note: Beth Dickinson and Mike Pavlichko both attended Spotswood High School, where Mike was the PA announcer while in school, graduating in 1996, and continuing through Beth’s senior season in 1999. Mike was inducted into the SHS Athletics Hall of Fame in 2007, as a contributor.

The 2007 Spotswood baseball team – coached then, as now, by Glenny Fredricks – went 26-4 and remains, by far, the best the school has ever had. It set school records for wins, batting average (.369), runs scored (239) and RBI (196). The Chargers finished the season ranked No. 1 in Middlesex County, and No. 7 statewide. And they are one of only two Greater Middlesex Conference teams to win the conference tournament and a state group championship in the same year. (Edison did it first, in 1993.)

Inducted were Fredricks, along with his assistants – his brother, Danny, Chris Ferrone, Matt Ardizzone, Mike Bruschini and Mike Feaster – and the following players: Anthony Addone, John Michael Berner III, Michael Collins, Brian Curci, Daniel Hohman, Richard Kuhn Jr., Jonathan Martin, Cody Pace, Joseph Reid, Timothy Snook, Vincent Vizzi, William Beard, Nicholas Brown, Jamie Cullen, Patrick Dwyer, Mike Hohman, David Lynch, Christopher Mooney, Joseph Petosa, Brian Scott, and Phil Spina.

Inducted separately was William Beard, who set single-season pitching records in 2007 for victories, strikeouts and complete games. He threw three no-hitters for the Chargers, including a perfect game. He’s the winningest pitcher in Middlesex County history with 27 victories and holds nearly all of Spotswood’s single-season and career pitching records. Beard later pitched at Rutgers, where he was a team captain and three-time Academic All-Big East pick.

Two other athletes, a coach and a contributor also were inducted.

The contributor was the late Ron Mazzola. Known as “Mr. Old Bridge,” he was also “The Voice of the Chargers,” providing the public address announcements for football for many years. Ron has been honored by so many of the schools and organizations he worked with before his untimely passing last Spring. Last month, Old Bridge renamed its press box after him.

The coach was Kevin Brady, who’s currently the girls’ soccer and softball mentor at East Brunswick, but who began his career with the Chargers in 1995, taking that very first team to the GMC Blue Division title with a record of 15-5-1. His teams won four Division title – in 1995, 2001, 2003 and 2005 and went 139-65-14 during his tenure. The 2001 team set a school record for victories with 16 – surpassed with 17 by his final team in Spotswood – and won the Chargers’ first-ever sectional championship: a penalty-kick victory over arch-rival South River. Brady also was an assistant on the girls’ basketball team when Dickinson starred on the hardwood.

Tim Logan, class of 2005, was a multi-sport athlete who is one of the few Chargers to be named first-team All-GMC in more than one endeavor. A four-year varsity letterwinner in basketball, he scored nearly 20 points a game and was fourth in scoring in the area, which he led in three-point shooting. In soccer, he was a two-time Captain, an all-section pick by the Soccer Coaches Association of New Jersey, and was the 2004-05 Spotswood High School Athlete of the Year. He played basketball for a year, but soccer for four seasons at the University of Scranton, where he ranks ninth all-time in school history in both career goals and career points.

Jason Pope, class of 1999, was a four-year first-singles varsity tennis player, who to this day holds the school record for career victories with 72. He was an All-GMC pick three times, and an All-Blue Division selection all four years with the Chargers, leading them to a division title in 1996. He competed collegiately at Niagara University, where in four years, he set school records for most season and career wins, and achieved an NCAA ranking in singles in 2002, as well as being named to the MAAC All-Academic team three times. He set that precedent in high school when he was president of the Spotswood chapter of the National Honor Society, and was presented with the SHS Booster Club’s Scholar-Athlete award in 1999.