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:
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.
READ MORE: Remembering Ron Mazzola, Mr. Old Bridge
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.