By JEFF APPELBLATT
Correspondent
Basketball season still isn’t entirely over for some of the seniors in the Shore Conference A North Division.
On March 23 at the Toms River High School North’s Pine Belt Arena, top players will compete in the Shore Basketball Coaches Senior All-Star Game.
First, at 6 p.m., will be the girls’ game. Three girls that battled the last four years with hopes of getting their teams to the top of the A North Division will play together on the West team. They are Colts Neck High School’s Sam Roth, Freehold Township High School’s Brianna Cucinelli and Marlboro High School’s Molly Weiss.
While the girls’ competition has rivals working together, the boys’ game at 7:45 p.m. will have a bunch of the opposite. Instead of working together with rivals, the boys have a bunch of teammates just a few weeks ago going against each other. None could be noticed more than the West team’s coach, Mike Nausedas, and the first player listed on the East team’s roster, P.J. Ringel.
Ringel was Nausedas’ best player the last four years at Marlboro.
Looking further into the lineups, Ringel will also go against one of his top teammates from this season at Marlboro, Dan Weiss. In addition, the Marlboro point guard will need to work with two of his top rivals from this season: Freehold Township’s Bobby Weise and Ryan Zyskowski.
It will be more of the norm when Ringel sees Freehold Township’s Stephen Staklinski trying to score against his team. The Patriots’ senior led his club over the Mustangs in two of three games played during the basketball season. But the scoring tandem of Staklinski and Zyskowski was always on the same side of the court for Freehold Township. Not on this day.