COLONIA, NJ–On Tuesday night, the 2010 Colonia JV Summer League came to an end with the semifinal and championship rounds played. It was a very competitive league at CHS this summer with the top five teams finishing within two games of first place. Piscataway earned the top seed while St. Joseph’s got the second seed. Union County Conference schools, Roselle I and Hillside also had first round byes as the third and fourth seeds respectively.
Perth Amboy, seeded sixth, made a fine run in the tourney with a first round win over Colonia I, and then an upset over Roselle I in the quarterfinals. The Panthers fell to St. Joe’s in the semis. Meanwhile, Piscataway had to hang on to defeat St. Mary’s of Elizabeth in the quarterfinals, and then lost to Hillside in the semis. St. Joe’s then defeated the Junior Comets to win the championship. There were twelve teams in the league from nine different schools. Of the nine schools, six were from the Greater Middlesex Conference.
GMC Hoops made the trip out to Colonia a few more times this summer, and captured action from all three days of the playoffs. The site saw St. Joseph’s twice, Piscataway twice, Colonia I and II five times. The Junior Falcons have a good group coming in again in 2010-11 with the likes of incoming sophomores Brian Fitzpatrick, Salman Hasan, Sean Finan, Tom Cicalese, and Steve Taraska along with incoming freshmen such as Jake Dadika, Mike Cintron, Mike Allen, and Rob Ciragi. Piscataway had the likes of Rodney Freeney and Clarence Morris with their JV squad. Colonia II was the better of the two squads with a 6-3 regular season record, a first round win over McCarrick II, and a loss to Hillside in the quarterfinals.
The GMC had three teams reach the Final Four with Piscataway, St. Joseph’s, and Perth Amboy reaching the semifinals, but the Union County schools: Hillside, Roselle, and St. Mary’s had some athletic players that brought a different style of play to the league that all the teams benefited from. This league has been running for a long time, and has been covered by the site in seven of the past eight years. After seeing significant growth a few years back with a peak of 16 teams in 2006, the league has experienced some decline.