Tag: state champions

by Mike Pavlichko

Where is Bridgewater-Raritan among baseball state champs from Somerset County?

When the Bridgewater-Raritan baseball team won the Group 4 state title Saturday night, with a 6-4 win over Eastern, the Panthers became the eighth different school from Somerset County to go all the way, and one of the others hailed from the same district.

Group play in the state tournament was enacted for the 1971 season. From the late ’50s through 1970, only sectional champions were crowned. From 1971 on, seven other Somerset County schools have won state titles.

That includes Bridgewater-Raritan West, which won the Group 2 title in 1989, becoming the second Somerset County school to be a state champion. It took 17 years for the first; that distinction belongs to Ridge, which won the 1987 Group 2 title. (Imagine, Basking Ridge was that small at one time!)

Pingry won Non-Public Group B in 1994, and Immaculata won it the next year, in 1995, along with in 2010. In between, Ridge won a pair of Group 2 titles in 2000 and 2002, while Hillsborough won Group 4 in 2005.

Bridgewater-Raritan’s Matt Fattore nears the plate after a solo home run to lead off the fifth inning in the NJSIAA Group 4 title game on June 8, 2024 in Hamilton, NJ. (Photo: Mike Pavlichko)

Rutgers Prep took its only crown in 2013, winning Non-Public B, while Somerville won Group 3 in 2018.

Bridgewater West and East – the second of which made the very first state finals, in Group 4 in 1971 – merged in 1992, so this year’s title was the second for the district, but first for the merged school.

The Panthers’ win also gave Somerset County eleven titles, now three shy of Middlesex County, which has had 14 winners, including two seasons where two county teams won titles.

Here’s a full list of state title winners in the CJSR coverage area:

MIDDLESEX COUNTY / GREATER MIDDLESEX CONFERENCE

  • 1980 – South Brunswick (Group 2)
  • 1981 – Edison (Group 4)
  • 1982 – Edison (Group 4)
  • 1990 – Carteret (Group 2), Middlesex (Group 1)
  • 1991 – Edison (Group 4)
  • 1993 – Edison (Group 4)
  • 2007 – Spotswood (Group 2), Middlesex (Group 1)
  • 2009 – JFK (Group 3)
  • 2013 – Middlesex (Group 1)
  • 2015 – South Plainfield (Group 3)
  • 2017 – Middlesex (Group 1)
  • 2018 – Middlesex (Group 1)
Spotswood beats Somerville 1-0 in the Central Jersey Group 2 final. The Chargers would go on to win the Group 2 state championship. (Photo submitted by Glenny Fredricks)

SOMERSET COUNTY

  • 1987 – Ridge (Group 2)
  • 1989 – Bridgewater-Raritan West (Group 2)
  • 1994 – Pingry (Non-Public B)
  • 1995 – Immaculata (Non-Public B)
  • 2000 – Ridge (Group 2)
  • 2002 – Ridge (Group 2)
  • 2005 – Hillsborough (Group 4)
  • 2010 – Immaculata (Non-Public A)
  • 2013 – Rutgers Prep (Non-Public B)
  • 2018 – Somerville (Group 3)
  • 2024 – Bridgewater-Raritan (Group 4)
by Mike Pavlichko

NJSIAA membership votes to allow football state championships; now the real work begins

by Mike Pavlichko

UPDATED with a statement from NJSIAA Executive Director Colleen Maguire.

A big hurdle has been cleared in New Jersey’s push to allow state championships in high school football.

At its Executive Committee meeting Wednesday, the NJSIAA announced that a measure to eliminate language from its own Constitution saying “no state championships, however, shall be declared in football” passed by a wide margin: 318-12, with six abstentions.

Ultimately 94.6 percent of the 336 schools that voted said “yes.”

It was widely expected the measure would get the OK from NJSIAA membership. An informal survey of a majority of Big Central Conference schools after the vote last week showed 37 schools that responded either had voted or planned to vote in favor of the measure to remove the language, while only two voted against the proposal.

“Our members have spoken and I applaud their decision,” NJSIAA Executive Director Colleen Maguire said in a statement. “Now it is time to get to work on a plan that will bring a true state champion in high school football to reality.”

New Jersey and New York are the only states in the country that don’t play the postseason all the way down to group championships.

But, as Maguire alluded to, actually playing to state champions is not a done deal just yet.

In effect, the vote is an approval of the idea in concept; it only eliminates language that prevented public schools from playing group championships.

Now, the membership must agree on the best way to do that.

Of course, the Football Leagues and Conferences Committee – which was responsible for Step One, already has Step Two ready to go, as outlined in a memo from Maguire, which can be found here. If approved, it would go into effect for the 2022 football season.

The Big Central Conference’s representatives on the committee are Big Central President and Brearley Athletic Director/Head Football Coach Soctt Miller, as well as Colonia Athletic Director Ben LaSala.

The plan would add an extra week of games to the postseason, allowing for five weeks of playoffs (the typical three sectional weeks, plus group semifinals and finals). But it would “backtime” the season so that the group championships would always be scheduled the week after Thanksgiving. The start of the season would be determined by counting back from Thanksgiving.

The plan is thought to address several key issues:

  • It allows for group champions to be crowned in public schools. Some consider the lack of true “state champions” a detriment to New Jersey football, which otherwise is some of the best in the nation
  • It does not add extra weeks on the back end of the season, avoiding additional conflicts for football players who participate in Winter sports. Many feared an additional week of playoffs would further disrupt football players who also participate in sports like basketball or wrestling.
  • It allows schools that play on Thanksgiving to continue with those games, without affecting the playoff schedule. Many schools with big rivalry games – like Phillipsburg has with Easton – did not want to be forced to choose between the playoffs or their Turkey Day games.

When could it all be official? By June, according to Maguire’s December 15th memo, which also fully outlined the proposal, and can be found here. The process would be started this Friday.

“A proposal from the working group will be submitted to NJSIAA by Friday, January 15, 2021. The Advisory Committee is scheduled to meet on Thursday, January 28, 2021. If the proposal is endorsed by the Advisory Committee, then the members of this working group will present their proposal at two sectional meetings to solicit further feedback. These sectional meetings will be scheduled at a later date,  but we anticipate that they will be held in either March or April. The final form and substance of the  proposal will be subject to approval by the Executive Committee at its meeting on Wednesday, May 12, 2021

According to the memo, final approval would come at the NJSIAA’s Annual Meeting, which was rescheduled this year from the first Monday in May (per NJSIAA bylaws) to June 7th.

It’s clear from the vote on Article IX the vast majority of NJSIAA schools approve of the idea of playing to state champions. The next challenge is getting everyone to agree on how to do it.