December 5, 2004: East Brunswick Wins the State Football Championship

December 5, 2004, 20 years ago: The Night of Nights for the football program at East Brunswick High School in East Brunswick, Middlesex County, New Jersey.

EBHS had opened in 1958, and had begun playing varsity football in 1961. The Bears had won Conference Championships in 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1972, 1984, 1986, 1987, 1990 and 1994.

They had won the Central Jersey Group IV Championship in 1966, and again in 1972, under the old system of who had the best record in the section. Both times, E.B. went 7-1-1. Both times, the 1 loss came against neighboring South River, to whom the Township of East Brunswick had sent its high school students from 1891 to 1958.

The New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association instituted State Playoffs for the 1974 season. At first, only the top 4 teams in each section qualified. Starting in 1998, it became the top 8 teams. Had that been the case from 1974 to 1997, East Brunswick would have qualified in 1977, 1978, 1981, 1986, 1992 and 1996. But it wasn't.

East Brunswick first qualified in 1980, losing in the Semifinal. In 1984, when I arrived at EBHS as a sophomore, they reached the Final, going into it as undefeated Conference Champions. But an undefeated State Championship season vanished on a missed two-point conversion, losing 27-26 to J.P. Stevens of Edison Township.

This was a shocking loss, the kind that used to happen to teams like the Boston Red Sox, the Chicago Cubs, the Philadelphia Phillies and Eagles, and the New York Rangers; and still happens to the New York Mets, the Cleveland Indians (now Guardians), the Buffalo Bills and the Philadelphia Flyers.

In 1985, the Bears reached the Final again. But, again, they lost to Stevens. They made the Playoffs again in 1987, but were wiped out in a frigid Semifinal against arch-rival Madison Central, the school now known as Old Bridge. The same thing happened in 1988, but in weather that was considerably less cold. They reached the Semifinal in 1990, losing to Trenton Central; the Semifinal again in 1994, losing to Piscataway; and the Quarterfinal in 1998, losing to Manalapan.

Then came a down period. Way down. They went 4-6 in 1999, 1-9 in 2000, and 0-10 in 2001. From November 25, 1999 to September 13, 2002, EB went an atrocious 2-21. They rebounded to 6-4 in 2002, but fell back to 4-6 in 2003. And, for Marcus Borden, who had been head coach since 1983, and had come so close in 1984, and nearly as close a few times since, there seemed to be no indication that 2004 would be any better.

We (yes, I have switched from "they" to "we," I admit it) opened the season with home wins over Perth Amboy and Edison. Then we lost away to Piscataway, and we figured a downward spiral into a typically weak season had begun.

But a funny thing happened on the way to mediocrity: We started winning again. We beat North Brunswick at home. Then we went to Sayreville, a tough trip since the early 1990s, and won. That was a good sign.

Before the next game, the Red Sox completed their improbable American League Championship Series comeback against the Yankees -- steroid-aided, as it turned out, but we didn't know that yet. We then beat Stevens at home. In the middle of the next week, the Red Sox beat the St. Louis Cardinals, to win their 1st World Series in 86 years. If the Red Sox could overcome a long drought that included several shocking defeats, why couldn't E.B. football?

We needed overtime to beat South Brunswick away, but not to then beat Woodbridge at home. We had qualified for the Playoffs. On November 13, at Jay Doyle Field -- named for the man who was our 1st athletic director, football coach and wrestling coach -- we beat Brick Township of Ocean County, 13-12. It was a difficult game, as we expected it would be, but we won it, advancing to the Semifinal for the 1st time in 10 years. On November 20, we won that, beating Hillsborough of Somerset County, 28-21 in overtime. We were now in the Final for the 1st time in 19 years.

Fortunately, the NJSIAA rejiggered its sectional boundaries for this season. Good thing, too, as it moved Piscataway from Central Jersey into North Jersey Section II, meaning that if we both made the Playoffs, we wouldn't have to face each other. Instead, we would have to face Jackson Memorial, of Ocean County. They hadn't lost a game in 2 years, and were going for back-to-back State Championships. But we were confident we could give them a game.

And then we went to Old Bridge for our annual Thanksgiving Day game against the arch-rivals, and laid an absolute egg. We lost 20-0, and we never even looked like scoring. What happened to the team that quarterback Matt Mariano had been leading to victory all year long? We hadn't beaten Old Bridge since 1994, and now, with our best team since then -- maybe our best team since 1984 -- we couldn't do it.

No matter: We had to get our confidence back up, because we still had a title to win. But it would be at Rutgers Stadium (now SHI Stadium), on the Busch Campus in Piscataway. It was the 1st time we'd ever played on artificial turf (most area high schools would soon get it, including us), and against the defending Champions. There were 12,000 people on hand, possibly the biggest crowd in EB history (and bigger than a lot of crowds were for Rutgers games at the old, 1938-92 version of Rutgers Stadium).

Somehow, Mariano kept us in the game. It was tight. But we never trailed. We led 7-0, were tied 7-7, led 10-7, led 17-7, and it was 17-14 us in the final seconds. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. After all, this was East Brunswick football we were talking about. Something bad always happens, and we always lose the big ones.

With time for 1 more play, Jackson tried a field goal. I don't remember the exact distance, but it was around 40 yards. It was cold, but there wasn't much wind, and it was on turf. A good high school kicker could have made it.

And, having been through so much with E.B. -- momentary screwups, all-game-long brain cramps, bogus calls by officials, rotten weather, you name it -- I was sure that the field goal would be good, and that we would lose in overtime.

When the field goal by Jackson was tried, it seemed to hang in the air forever. It didn't, and the other shoe did. The attempt fell a few yards short, and, on December 5, 2004, East Brunswick was the State Champion. Well, the Central Jersey Group IV Champion, anyway.

I'd waited 20 years for that moment, and some EB fans had waited 32 years. The wait was over. Marcus Borden's Green-White Army had conquered. They had beaten the greatest opponent of all: Fear.

Deep in my heart, I had ceased to believe that we would overcome one day. But that day finally came. We had overcome.

Five years later, to the day, EB did it again, beating Brick Memorial in a snowstorm at The College of New Jersey (formerly Trenton State College), 9-0. We now had 2 State Championships. And that's a lot better than none.

UPDATE: In 2006, due to rising enrollment at Jackson Memorial, the Township of Jackson opened a 2nd high school, naming it Jackson Liberty. In 2025, due to declining enrollment at both schools, the Township reconsolidated, putting all students at Jackson Liberty, and repurposing Jackson Memorial as a middle school.

So, while Jackson had one high school in the 2004-05 schoolyear, and would again in 2025-26, in a manner of speaking, the school that E.B. beat for that 1st Central Jersey Group IV Championship in the Playoff era no longer exists.

East Brunswick Football: State Champions!

I've been having a lot of trouble with my home computer lately. As a result, my posts have become infrequent. I apologize.

But I had to find a usable computer and post. And not because of the Nets finally breaking their 18-game losing streak.

Dear Old Alma Mater, East Brunswick High School, Da Bears, won the Central Jersey Group IV football championship on Saturday afternoon, defeating Brick Memorial 9-0 in a snowstorm at the College of New Jersey (formerly Trenton State College) in the Trenton suburb of Ewing.

This is the 4th time the Big Green have been State Champions in football. Well, Sectional Champions. New Jersey has definitive champions, or at least group champions based on enrollment, for every sport except football. But we'll take it.

In the system that was in place until 1973, sectional champions were chosen by which team had the best won-lost record. In 1966, and again in 1972, E.B. finished 7-1-1, and was declared co-champions. To this day, I don't know who the other co-champions were in either season. I do know that, each time, the one loss was to South River, generally considered our arch-rivals between the 1960-61 schoolyear (when we began varsity-level sports, with the football program starting the following year) until 1975-76 (when, due to the severely-reduced enrollments at South River and some other schools due to new schools opening, they were dropped to a new league).

In 1974, the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) instituted the Playoffs, and that season only the top 2 teams qualified. From 1975 to 1997, the top 4 did. Since 1998, it's been the top 8.

We reached the Central Jersey Group IV Championship Game in 1984 and 1985 (losing both times to J.P. Stevens, the '84 game a heartbreaker where our undefeated season was lost by 1 point), and lost in the Semifinals in 1980 (under deeply scandalous circumstances to Raritan High of Hazlet), 1987 (an Ice Bowl blowout by Old Bridge, then known as Madison Central), 1988 (another blowout by Madison), 1990 (a thriller against Trenton Central) and 1994 (a close loss to Piscataway filled with bogus officiating). We lost in the Quarterfinals in 1998 (falling way behind against Manalapan but almost coming all the way back).

We just missed qualifying for the Playoffs in 1977 (winning our 1st 5, then tying our next 2 and losing our last 2), 1978, 1981 (missing largely due to a Rain Bowl loss to Cedar Ridge, the since-closed other Old Bridge school), 1986 (my senior year at EBHS, that really burned me up), 1992, 1995 and 1996. In each of those seasons, had the 1998-present setup been in place, we would have qualified. Would we have won the Central Jersey Group IV title in any of those seasons? I'm still convinced we would have won in '86, but that's my own bias. I don't think we would have won it all in any of the others.

Ironically, the 2 times we've won it all in the post-1974 Playoff Era, we didn't need the extra 4 seeds. In 2004, we got the 2nd seed, and beat Brick Township in a tight contest, then Hillsborough in a mind-bending overtime thriller, and finally upset Jackson Memorial at Rutgers Stadium, 17-14, to finally throw the monkey -- nay, the 800-pound gorilla -- off our backs. To make it even more amazing in hindsight, Jackson Memorial (then usually referred to as just "Jackson," since Jackson Liberty was still being built) had won the previous year's title, and would win the next year's title. It was the only game they lost in those 3 seasons.

But after 32 years of waiting (20 for me), filled with shocking collapses, dodgy refereeing, bad weather and coaching brainlocks -- I'm talking defeats of Redsoxian or Cubbish or Buffalo Billsian proportions -- we'd finally done it. December 5, 2004: A date which lives in ecstasy.

Just once. Like fans of other teams that are said to be "cursed," I said, "Just once. Just let them win it once in my lifetime." I'd waited 20 years. When we finally won it, I thought it would keep me satisfied for the next 20 years. As it turned out, I only had to wait 5, before the footsteps of our diminutive but come-up-big quarterback Matt Mariano were followed in. (Yankee Fans will not be surprised to know that our big winner was named Mariano. Of course, he's Italian, not Panamanian.)

*

Coach Marcus Borden, known in the Eighties for a superb passing attack, has for 20 years now run an option offense, similar to the wishbone, calling it the flexbone. Running it these last two seasons was quarterback Mauro Tucci -- whose father, Mauro Sr., also happens to be my parents' doctor. It's a good family. Although I have to question the sanity of Mauro Jr. and the other E.B. players who played the whole game in short sleeves. Only a few did, but, seriously, they must've seen too many old Green Bay Packer films.

Anyway, we were the 4th seed, despite losing a late-season game to Brick Memorial, the defending CJ IV Champions, who only got the 6th seed. But under the current system, being the 4th seed gave us a home game in the quarterfinals, where we beat West Windsor 27-0 in a steady rain. The Pirates aren't a bad team, but they couldn't get anything going, and Tucci, Mike Weber and Jared Lynch ran all over them, while our defense, led by the brothers Anthony and Nick Gudzak, shut them out.

The Semifinal put us in Sayreville, who'd beaten us 34-13 earlier in the season and won the Greater Middlesex Conference Red Division Championship. (They'd also beaten Brick Memorial in the regular season, avenging their loss in the 2008 CJ IV Championship Game.) But Weber was hurt in that one. Due to scheduling quirks (including playing nearly the entire 2007 season on the road because Jay Doyle Field was being converted to FieldTurf), we've now played Sayreville away 5 times in the last 4 seasons. To make matters worse, from 1961 to 1990, 30 seasons, we played them 28 times and went 27-1; since 1991, we've played them 20 times and gone just 7-13. (It's still 34-14 us, a pretty good record.)

But we scored an early touchdown to take a 7-0 lead. Then Borden ordered Tyler Yonchiuk, son of his former assistant (and former Edison High head coach) Gerry Yonchiuk, to squib the ensuing kickoff. Orders followed, but bad orders. It gave Sewerville a short field, and they scored, and got the 2-pointer to take the lead, 8-7. (That nickname isn't just trash talk on my part: The Middlesex County Sewerage Authority is actually headquartered in Sayreville. And their stadium really does stink.)

But on the final play of the 1st half, Yonchiuk kicked a field goal to make it 10-8 E.B. You should have seen the looks on the Bombers' faces. They could not believe they were losing a Playoff game on their own field. To their most hated rivals! They were stunned. We were in their heads, and the looks on the Bears' faces showed that we knew it.

Yonchiuk added a field goal in the 4th quarter to make it 13-8, and that was crucial, because it meant Sayreville needed a touchdown to win. And their final drive got down inside our 5, and their kicker would have been able to win it, turning 10-8 us into 11-10 them. Instead, they needed a touchdown to make it 14-13 (pending the conversion), but our secondary shut them down, and we won.

Amazingly, Brick Memorial, so long in the shadow of "big brother" Brick Township but now the defending Champions, upset Hunterdon Central of Flemington, and then upset their next-door neighbors (albeit in the adjoining County) Howell to set up a rematch with us in the Final. The regular-season game with BM was 37-34 them -- the most points we'd ever scored without winning in 49 seasons of varsity football.

The Final was to be a very different story.

*

Rutgers was playing West Virginia on Saturday afternoon, making Rutgers Stadium unavailable for State Finals. So TCNJ was used for Central Jersey Finals, and Kean University in Union for North Jersey Finals. There isn't really a large stadium in South Jersey, unless you want to count the 6,000-seat minor-league ballparks in Camden and Atlantic City, so the higher seeds hosted those games. (The first State Finals, in 1974, were held at the Atlantic City Convention Hall, now "Boardwalk Hall," with 17,000 seats but only enough space for an 80-yard field.)

Anyway, while Rutgers nearly came back from a 21-3 deficit but lost 24-21, the weather changed from steady rain to snow, with some wind, right before our kickoff. E.B. won the toss, and wisely decided to defer our choice to the 2nd half. We held Brick Memorial on their 1st possession, and I took that as a very good sign. And Lynch broke off a long run to put us in superb position. But we fumbled the ball away on the next play. So everyone knew this was not going to be another shootout.

The Mustangs had a lot of trouble, as both the artificial field and the ball were slick. Tucci later described the field as being like a skating rink, and several times I saw him click his heels. Not to try to get back to Kansas, or even to signal to his running backs, but to get the snow out of his cleats. He moved us enough to get into field goal range, and Yonchiuk booted it through. It was 3-0 Bears, and I had the sinking feeling that this might be it. That might be all the scoring. (We had a 6-0 loss many years ago, but never a game where both teams combined for less than that.)

At halftime, it was still 3-0, as our defense held, and the Mustang offense had all kinds of trouble, blowing a field goal attempt with 2 minutes left in the half. Strangely, while their center sent their punter some awful snaps, we didn't block any. We did get some great field position, but couldn't do much with it.

By contrast, Yonchiuk, our punter as well as our placekicker and kickoff man, didn't have any trouble with snaps, but had one of his punts blocked. Still, they couldn't take advantage. Joe Quaglieri, Pete Sorrento, and the Gudzak brothers were magnificent. I know, bad weather tends to hurt offenses, but advantage must still be taken, and my Bears did. And, let's not forget, Tucci and his offense had to play in the exact same weather that made the Mustangs struggle.

I've seen E.B. play football in bitter cold. I've seen us play in driving rain. I once saw a game suspended late in the 4th quarter, with us up by 2 touchdowns, when a thunderstorm was highlighted -- literally -- by a lightning bolt striking one of the light towers. (I swear, I'm not making that up: September 26, 1986, at Brick Township. You ever see 5,000 people run screaming for their cars? I have. The NJSIAA declared the game officially over 2 days later.) But as far as anybody can determine (and I asked people who've been around since the Seventies and even the Sixties), this is the 1st time in nearly half a century of football that E.B. has played in the snow.

Not that it wasn't also very cold. Thank God I brought gloves, or else I wouldn't have made it. (Two days later, those gloves remain soaked. At least my sneakers have almost dried out.) As it was, the combination of cold air, cold snow, and cold aluminum stands froze my feet.

There was an elderly couple, watching their grandson play, and they were bundled up in a blanket. A Bears blanket. A Chicago Bears blanket. Except we, the fans of the East Brunswick Bears, weren't sitting on frigid Lake Michigan, the way the NFL Bears do with Soldier Field. TCNJ is 3 miles inland, and there's a big difference between being on a Great Lake and being on the Delaware River. (Though when the wind comes blasting in off the Hackensack River, it sure makes the Meadowlands parking lot feel like Siberia.)

At halftime, the Brick Memorial cheerleaders started a snowball fight with our cheerleaders. It was all in good fun. But I couldn't resist going into my old "Crazy Mike" mode, and played on the theme of the opposing mascot, the Mustangs: "Let's send these horses to the glue factory!" And "Giddyup on outta here, horsie!" And, referencing the Ford sports car, "These Mustangs need a tune-up!" (Sorry, no "Yippie-ki-yay, motherfucker!" or "You're a horseshit team!" or even use of the word "gelding." This was high school ball. Different standards apply when you're yelling at kids instead of young men in college or seasoned professionals.)

Slowly and carefully, knowing that as long as we held the ball, they couldn't score, and that the lead meant that both the clock and the weather were our allies rather than Memorial's, Tucci led a 3rd-quarter drive that Bill Parcells would have loved. He got us to the 12-yard line, and then our offensive line opened a hole through which Santa Claus could have driven his sleigh. Mike Weber didn't need 8 reindeer to guide him through (although, in the cold, he may have had a red nose), and he scored a touchdown. Despite making the field goal earlier, Yonchiuk missed the extra point.

Still, with the snow continuing to fall, and the temperature still dropping, midway through the 3rd quarter, a 9-0 lead looked awfully safe. As it turned out, it was completely safe -- if you've got a defense like ours. In the 3 Playoff games combined, we allowed just 8 points, and even those 8 were the result of a bad kickoff. You just don't see that in the Playoffs. You particularly don't see too many shutouts in State Finals. But the Grizzly D was up to the task.

I used to have this fantasy, in the days before we finally won it all. I imagined E.B. finally making it back to the Central Jersey Group IV Championship Game, but it would be played at Giants Stadium, in bitter cold, possibly in snow, with that tin can's swirling wind making it even worse. Could we possibly survive in such a situation? Now, while the venue was different and the wind wasn't strong enough to be a factor, the fantasy had come close enough to coming true. And we were not only surviving, we were thriving.

The minutes counted down. The Mustangs were totally flustered. They had 2 drives in the last 6 minutes of regulation. And each time, one of the Gudzak brothers intercepted a pass, first Anthony with about 5 minutes left, and then Nick with about 2 minutes to go. In all,  just 12 passes were attempted in this game, 10 by Brick Memorial, 2 by Tucci. None were completed, and 4 were intercepted (3 by us, 1 by them).

While the 2004 win over Jackson Memorial was not decided until the final play (a missed field goal), this one was pretty much ended by Anthony Gudzak's interception. Nick's almost seemed like we were piling on. (Not that I wasn't glad to have it. It could have been 9-6, or 9-7 -- 9-8 wouldn't have made an appreciable difference -- and they could have tempted fate and the snow with an onside kick and gotten into field goal range.) But an anticlimatic finish is acceptable when it's your team winning the State Championship.

Afterward, the players and cheerleaders made snow angels in the end zone. They didn't want to leave. We, the fans, however, wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. It wasn't quite Green Bay cold, but Chicago cold? Cleveland cold? Buffalo cold? On this night, Trenton cold was cold enough, thank you very much!

And while we're on the subject of gratitude, thank God nobody got seriously hurt. There could have been any number of injuries in this game. Yonchiuk took a little bit of a knock, but he played the rest of the game, and as far as I can tell, nobody was hurt to the point where, if there were another game the next week, they would have missed it. Those football players who will go on to play basketball or wrestle starting next week should be fine.

To Coach Borden, his staff, and his players: Thank you, gentlemen. You have made half a century of Bear alumni proud. You played superbly, and cleanly. You did it, and you did it the right way, holding your intensity without giving up an ounce of class -- not an easy line to walk, but you walked it, and you walked off with the title.

East Brunswick Bears
State Champions
1966 1972 2004 2009
Conference Champions
1965 1966 1967 1968
1969 1970 1972 1984
1986 1987 1990 1994

E.B. Forever!