South Brunswick Ice Hockey Welcomes New Season and League

After years of traveling the state to play the best competition, the South Brunswick High School ice hockey team has found new opponents in its own county.

South Brunswick is one of the teams in the inaugural Greater Middlesex County Hockey League.

"Pretty much every other sport plays in the Greater Middlesex leagues," South Brunswick ice hockey coach Michael Slansky said. "It used to be a necessity to travel around for games, but more schools have added ice hockey as a sport. Now there are nine teams in the conference. This will cut down on travel. It'll be good all the way around."

Especially for a talented team like South Brunswick, which will be in the running to win the first conference championship.  But to do so will require besting St. Joe's of Metuchen, one of the two teams that finished ahead of South Brunswick in a different conference last year. 

"Obviously, we need to get past St. Joe's of Metuchen," Coach Slansky said. "I think we'll be competitive with them. We  should be competitive with the rest of the teams."

South Brunswick  returns two players -- Russell Lorring and Sean Kacerosky -- who were honorable mentions on the conference all-star team last season. Lorring is a senior who plays forward. Kacerosky is a junior who plays defense.

South Brunswick has only five seniors on the team, but they will be counted on heavily to put the puck in the net. Lorring, Ryan Christofalo, Will Connell, Jarrid Harpster and Joe Marchesani are all forwards.

In addition to Kacerosky, the other juniors are Ryan Fisher (defense), Daniel Gorzynski (forward), Will Logan (forward), Brian Leach (goalie), Joseph Muha (forward), Will Petrone (forward), Casey Walker (forward) and Connor Van DeMark (forward).

There are no JV or freshman teams, so the underclassmen will get a chance to see what they can do at the varsity level.

The sophomores on the team are Thomas Fisher (defense), Michael Guida (forward) and Ketul Patel (defense).

The freshmen on the team are Bryan Colhoun (defense), Matt Gorzynski (goalie), Raj Kumar (forward), Sam Petrone (forward) and Manuel Rethage (forward).

"We'll dress 20 for every game, but whether they all see ice time is questionable," noted Coach Slansky, who will be assisted by Jeff King and volunteer Justin Slansky.

South Brunswick was 13-4-1 last year and did have the opportunity to use a lot of its players in certain games. In the closer, more competitive games, Coach Slansky said he envisions probably going with only two lines.

 South Brunswick is scheduled to open the season with a game on Dec. 3 against JP Stevens at Rock Ice, located in Dunellen. South Brunswick will host the next two games -- on Dec. 8 at 3:15 p.m.against Edison and Dec. 10 at 4:30 p.m. against Woodbridge -- at Pro Skates Arena.

   "We should be set up for a good year," Coach Slansky said.