While the Colonia boys’ basketball team was very much a team in every sense of the word, there’s no doubt who is the big draw: Aiden Derkack.

They’ve got a lot of excellent ballplayers. Even Derkack – who was named GMC Tournament MVP for the second year in a row, the first to be so honored since Quentin DeCosey of St. Joseph-Metuchen in 2011 and 2012 – admitted R.J. Wortman could have at least shared the MVP honor with him.

That shows you, of course, what kind of leader Derkack is. But that’s not even something that came as naturally’ it was something he really worked on in the off-season leading into this, his junior year.

Which is another scary proposition for their Greater Middlesex Conference foes. While losing excellent senior guard Zach Smith to graduation, he’s the only senior departing – there’s not even another bench player moving on. So essentially, the entire band will be back in 2025-26.

And that includes Aiden Derkack, Central Jersey Sports Radio’s GMC Boys’ Basketball Player of the Year.

But back to Derkack. The numbers he’s been putting up are off the charts. While a full list of all-time scorers isn’t available, among GMC boys school career scoring leaders, he’s 14th all-time at 1,739 career points. He’ll easily crack the 2,000-point mark next year, joining a club that includes just ten players, although two of them just joined this year, seniors Jalen Fleming of Timothy Christian (2,152) and Alex Grospe of South River (2,173).

Derkack won’t catch No. 1 on the list – John Somogyi at 3,310 points – he could get very, very close, depending on how deep the Patriots go in next year’s postseason, to Blake and Brian Taylor of those great Perth Amboy teams. Brian finished with 2,495, graduating in 1969, while Blake landed at 2,541, graduating in 1975. Derkack would need 802 points to reach Blake Taylor; he scored 790 this season, averaging 24.7 points per game.

Click below to hear Central Jersey Sports Radio’s GMC Boys’ Player of the Year Aiden Derkack:

Here are our Honorable Mentions for GMC Boys’ Player of the Year:

• R.J. Wortman, Colonia: Aiden Derkack may be the star, and everyone plays a role for the Patriots, but their run in the postseason may not have been possible without Wortman, who only played in eleven games last season and scored a grand total of nine points. This season he averaged 12.2 points per game, but was even bigger in the postseason. In the GMC Tournament, he averaged almost 18 points through four games, scoring 20 in the semifinals over St. Thomas Aquinas, then registering a double-double of 23 points and 13 rebounds in the title game win over Piscataway.
• Nate Davis, Piscataway: There was plenty of talent to go around with the Chiefs as well, and Davis was the team’s leading scorer. Davis averaged 14.5 points per game, and hit a team best 53 treys on the year. Sophomore Landon Pernell was an excellent point guard, and he’ll have his day, but Davis – along with fellow senior Vaughn Turner, the two biggest pieces graduating – was instrumental in the success the Chiefs achieved under first-year head coach and Coach of the Year Bob Turco: providing senior leadership for the rejuvenated Piscataway program.
• Aiden Ur, St. Thomas Aquinas: It was a difficult year around the Trojan program in 2024-25, but one player who was key and stuck with it en route to a 15-12 season amongst all the turmoil was Aiden Ur, who joined St. Thomas after playing his first two seasons at St. John Vianney in Holdmel. Ur averaged 16.2 points per game this season with 44 treys, and scored in double figures in all but five out of 27 games. Ur was a steadying force this year.
• Alex Grospe, South River: The Rams weren’t able to duplicate their success of a couple of years ago, when they went to the Central Jersey Group 2 title game, but he had another outstanding year and was one of two GMC players to join the elite, eight-member 2,000-point club. Grospe – the program’s all-time top scorer – averaged an even 30 points per game this year, and finishes with 2,173 points, placing him fifth all-time in Middlesex County history (including before the GMC era). In his career, he hit 170 three-pointers, and was never someone you’d want to put on the foul line, where he was a nearly 80-percent free-throw shooter in his final three seasons as a Ram.
• Jalen Fleming, Timothy Christian: Fleming is the other one to join the GMC’s 2,000-point club this year, finishing at 2,152, and also becoming the all-time leading scorer in his school’s history. Quick, but also powerful, he can hit the three or throw down a dunk in transition. Fleming had the biggest scoring season of his four years with the Tigers, going for 681, a 26.2 point per game average. He hit 136 triples in his career, and is an 82-percent free-throw shooter. On defense, he averaged over 40 steals a season all four years on varsity.