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UPDATE: Brick Wins First State Football Championship Since 1994
Brick won its first state championship and seventh in school history, winning the Central Jersey Group IV championship 26-15. Updated with interviews, photos.
Brick won its first state football championship and seventh in school history, winning the Central Jersey Group IV championship 26-15 on Saturday.
Brick defeated Colts Neck in a game that was close until the fourth quarter when the Green Dragons finally pulled away.
At a program where tradition is everything, Brick paid the ultimate tribute to its championship teams of the past with a fourth-quarter drive for the ages to bring home the team’s first state title since 1994 on Saturday at The College of New Jersey, according to the Shore Sports Network.
Trailing third-seeded Colts Neck by three points with 11:12 left in the Central Jersey Group IV final, the top-seeded Green Dragons embarked on a 14-play, 76-yard drive that ate up nearly nine minutes before taking the lead for good on a 2-yard touchdown run by junior running back Ray Fattaruso. They punched in one more for good measure to start the celebration with a 26-15 victory for the seventh state title in their illustrious history, according to the Shore Sports Network.
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Brick had overcome a lot to win its first state championship without Warren Wolf, the Brick icon who retired after 51 seasons as football coach in 2008.
In September, the state’s governing body for high school athletics granted a fifth year of athletic eligibility to Anthony Starego, the autistic Brick High School kicker who gained national attention in October 2012 when he booted a game-winning field goal in a varsity football game.“It means the world,” said head coach Rob Dahl, who played under legendary coach Warren Wolf at Brick, according to Shore Sports Network. “That was the goal three years ago when I took the job. The amount of alumni guys over here got me real emotional at the beginning of the game, and I basically just stressed the point that we can’t let these guys down. We’ve got to get this seventh title and we did.
“When you get look at all the old scores in the Brick championship games, they weren’t blowouts. They were 9-7, 7-6, 21-20 vs. Camden (in 1974). They were all close games that took place with a long drive at the end, and it was a staple of all those championship years,” he told Shore Sports Network.
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