East Brunswick Fall Sports Roundup: Shutouts, Sweeps and a 22-Point Fourth Quarter

East Brunswick High School athletics · Sunday, Aug. 30 – Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026

Fall sports arrived in East Brunswick all at once this week, and the Bears made the most of the opening.

Six varsity teams played twelve contests in six days. In that stretch East Brunswick produced two field hockey routs in which no opponent scored, two tennis sweeps so complete the Bears never lost a single court, a fourth-quarter avalanche under the Friday night lights, and a goalkeeping performance that kept a game respectable almost single-handedly.

The overall ledger finished even at six wins and six losses. That number undersells the week. Four of the six wins came without conceding a thing — not a goal, not a flight — and the losses contain some of the most impressive individual numbers any East Brunswick athlete posted all week.

Here’s how it went, sport by sport.

Field Hockey: 15 Goals For, Zero Against, and a Defense Nobody Could Test

If you want the story of the week, Danielle Bradley’s field hockey team wrote it in two games.

The Bears opened at home against Monroe on Senior Recognition Night and won 7-0. Two days later they went to Piscataway on a Saturday morning and won 8-0. That is a 2-0 start, a 15-0 aggregate, and two clean sheets — and the way those numbers break down is even better than the totals.

Start with the defense, because it barely got worked. Across two full games, East Brunswick’s opponents managed one shot on goal between them. Monroe got a single attempt on target all night. Piscataway never registered one at all. Reagan Umbach has won both starts and has yet to concede a goal, and the Bears have given her almost nothing to do.

The attack was the opposite of conservative. Against Monroe the Bears earned 16 penalty corners to Monroe’s one, converting three of them — a lopsided territorial edge that turned into a seven-goal night.

And this wasn’t one player getting hot. Eight different East Brunswick players scored this week, which is a lot of ways to beat you. Against Monroe it was Jolie Salamon, two from Alexa DeRado, two from Rachel Gerould, plus Logan Hooper and Carissa Kovarcik. On Saturday the scoring spread even wider: Talia Locascio opened it, Arianna DeMaio and Gianna Spinello each struck twice, Hooper added another and Gerould closed the afternoon with two more.

Rachel Gerould has four goals in her first two games — a dominant opening week for any forward. DeRado, DeMaio, Spinello and Hooper each scored twice. And Carissa Kovarcik set up four of the fifteen goals, the sort of week that never lands in a headline and absolutely decides seasons.

Two games, fifteen goals, one shot faced. The Bears travel to Metuchen on Sept. 10.

Girls Tennis: Ten Courts, Twenty Sets, and Not One of Them Lost

Cory Widmaier’s team has played two matches and has not yet lost a court. Not a flight, not a set.

East Brunswick beat Monroe 5-0 at home on Tuesday, then went to Edison on Thursday and won 5-0 again. Across those two afternoons the Bears swept all ten flights and all twenty sets, winning 120 games to 13. Thirteen games conceded across an entire week of tennis.

Thirteen of those twenty sets were 6-0 shutouts.

The best of it belongs to Kellyanne Mossi at third singles, who did not lose a single game all week. She won 6-0, 6-0 against Monroe and 6-0, 6-0 against Edison — 24 games to none across two matches. A double bagel is a rare afternoon in high school tennis. Two in the same week is a genuinely exceptional stretch of play.

She wasn’t alone at Edison, where the Bears were close to untouchable: Aiona Cheng won 6-0, 6-0 at second singles and Kaitlin Wang and Prisha Patel did the same at first doubles. Three of the five flights that afternoon were shutouts, and Edison won three games in the entire match.

Arya Joshi was a model of consistency at the top of the lineup, handling Rayna Guntaka 6-2, 6-0 and then Emma Feng by the identical 6-2, 6-0 on consecutive match days. Cheng had opened the week with a 6-2, 6-0 win of her own. Wang and Patel took Monroe’s first doubles pair 6-1, 6-0 before their shutout at Edison. Andrea Baraian and Kelsey Zhao played the week’s only genuinely competitive set, winning 6-4, 6-1 against Monroe, and then closed at Edison 6-1, 6-0.

Ten flights contested, ten flights won. South Brunswick visits Sept. 8.

Football: Trailing After Three, and Then the Roof Came Off

Friday night at the East Brunswick stadium turned on twelve minutes of football.

The Bears led North Hunterdon 14-13 at the half, went scoreless in the third, and walked into the fourth quarter behind, 19-14. What happened next decided it: 22 unanswered points, and North Hunterdon did not score again. Final, 36-19, and Zack Gega’s team is 2-0.

It was a dramatic turnaround, and it came from both sides of the ball.

Gabriel Marquez supplied the explosive plays, breaking a 24-yard touchdown run in the first quarter and then a 66-yard touchdown run in the second — two long scores from one back in a single half. In the fourth, Sean Christie found Ezra Franklin from three yards out and then ran in the two-point conversion himself, an eight-point swing that put East Brunswick back in front.

Then the defense simply took the game over the way defenses are allowed to: East Brunswick returned two interceptions for touchdowns in the fourth quarter. Back-to-back defensive scores, fourteen points that the offense never had to take the field for. A five-point deficit became a seventeen-point win in a single quarter.

The Bears host Piscataway on Sept. 10.

Boys Soccer: A 5-0 Opener, and a 3-1 Answer Two Days Later

Terry McKibbin’s side had a rough Tuesday, losing 5-0 at Toms River East. The response arrived quickly.

At North Brunswick on Thursday the first half ended scoreless. The second half did not: East Brunswick scored three times to win 3-1, levelling the record at 1-1 and turning the week around in the space of forty-five minutes.

Kareem Amer was the difference, scoring twice — a standout afternoon and the clearest individual performance of the Bears’ week on the pitch. Daniel Krasnopolskiy added the third. What’s notable is how spread out the creativity was: Liam Kim, Temi Koiki and Quentin Taha each supplied an assist, meaning five different East Brunswick players had a hand in three goals. Nobody had to carry it alone.

Goalkeeper Rosario Volino made six saves to protect the win, and the Bears outshot North Brunswick 10-7 on target — control of the game to go with the scoreline.

East Brunswick is at Monroe on Sept. 8.

Girls Soccer: Caylin Docherty Had One of the Best Weeks of Anybody

Kevin Brady’s team lost twice. Read past the results column anyway, because the goalkeeping in front of those results was outstanding.

Across the two matches Caylin Docherty faced 21 shots on target and stopped 18 of them.

On Tuesday, Metuchen won 2-0 at the East Brunswick stadium with goals in the 33rd and 60th minutes. Docherty made six saves on the eight shots that reached her.

Thursday at Geick Park was the performance of her week. Old Bridge put thirteen shots on target. Docherty saved twelve. The Bears held a 2-0 team scoreless through the first half and deep into the second, and the only goal of the game finally came in the 52nd minute. East Brunswick lost 1-0 in a match where the opposition put thirteen shots on target — and the single biggest reason it stayed a one-goal game was the player in goal.

That is a twelve-save shift in a one-goal defeat. The record reads 0-2. The goalkeeping reads a great deal better than that.

The Bears are at Monroe on Sept. 8.

Girls Volleyball: An 0-3 Week With Real Individual Production Inside It

Andrew Chup’s team played three matches — more than any other East Brunswick program this week — and lost to Woodbridge, Monroe and Colonia. The scoreboard is not the interesting part of this section.

Zoe Holeman ran essentially the entire offense. She recorded 9 assists against Woodbridge, 10 against Monroe and 5 against Colonia: 24 of the team’s 31 assists on the week, better than three-quarters of everything East Brunswick set up. Holeman was at the center of nearly everything East Brunswick created offensively.

Isabella Villatoro contributed in every phase of the game. She put down three kills in each of the three matches for nine on the week, added nine digs, and served six aces — 43 percent of the team’s total — including a four-ace night in the opener against Woodbridge. Kills, digs and serving, in all three matches.

Danielle Manning was the other consistent attacking threat with eight kills, including a team-leading four against Monroe. Gwyneth Macke added six, four of them against Colonia. Gabriella Pagan put up two blocks in the Monroe match. Eva Munoz and Ciara Van Ness were steady in the back row, Van Ness leading the team with five digs against Colonia. Addyson Danchak, Alexandra Doneva, Shipra Patil, Olivia Hall and Alicia Chun all saw court time across the week.

Three matches in six days is the heaviest schedule any East Brunswick team carried. The Bears travel to Old Bridge on Sept. 8.

Also on the Bears’ Calendar

Two East Brunswick fall programs haven’t opened yet, and both start shortly.

Boys and girls cross country begin their seasons on Tuesday, Sept. 8, hosting South Brunswick at Thompson Park — the same course that hosts the GMC Division Championship on Sept. 19 and the GMC Championships in October.

Gymnastics, coached by Allyson McMahon, opens Thursday, Sept. 10 at Piscataway.

Eyes on EB will be covering both.

The Week in Full

Go Bears.