Season Finales

This is a bittersweet time for high school seniors as the days until graduation wind down. They and their families are going through things which had become routine for the final time and included in that for many are their days as a competitive athletes. Over the past couple of weeks just about each day a high school team’s season ended with a loss and as of today only a few are still playing, including the baseball teams from Toms River North and Jackson Memorial. The Mariners, who won their second straight South Jersey Group 4 Championship, will face powerful Hunterdon Central in the Group 4 semifinals tomorrow. Meanwhile the Jackson Jaguars have a Wednesday night date with CBA in the championship game of the Shore Conference Tournament at FirstEnergy Park.

Another group looking for a championship is the Southern Regional Boys Volleyball team. The Rams face defending champion St. Joseph of Metuchen in the South Jersey Sectional Final tomorrow night at South Brunswick High School after finally getting some revenge on East Brunswick in the semifinals. Nick Nichols led the Rams against an East Brunswick team that had knocked them out of the tournament two straight years. Coach Eric Maxwell’s team takes a 36-5 record into the section final.

With Toms River East bowing out of the state and Shore Conference Tournaments the season is over for all of the Ocean County softball teams.

A sad footnote to a historic tragedy:

The last remaining survivor of the Titanic disaster died over the weekend in the same city her family was trying to leave behind when the unsinkable ship sunk on its maiden voyage. 97-year old Millvina Dean died in her sleep in a nursing home in Southampton, England. She was just two months old when the Titanic hit an iceberg on April 14, 1912 and along with her mother and 2-year old brother were among the 706 survivors. Dean’s father, who was moving the family to Kansas City, died along with more than 1500 others. After the disaster her family returned to England…Dean was not told she was a passenger on the ship until she was 8 years old. She never married and spent the last three years of her life in a nursing home.