Life came full circle for BJ Grill, a 2011 Bridgewater-Raritan High School graduate, on the morning of April 14.

Now head coach of the Marin Catholic High School boys’ lacrosse team, Grill took his players  on a cross-country flight from the Kentfield, California campus for a Spring Break trip to the East Coast.

The trip consisted of three games in as many warm days at Montgomery High School, Chatham High School, and finally on the opposing sideline at Bridgewater-Raritan High School, which he helped lead to the 2011 NJSIAA Boys Lacrosse Group 4 state championship along with that season’s Tournament of Champions state title.

While Bridgewater-Raritan ultimately overcame a two-goal deficit early in the second quarter en route to an eventual 14-6 victory against Marin Catholic, the significance of this day in the storied history of Panthers Lacrosse was much bigger than any final scoreboard result: a day that Grill particularly was determined to bring to life long before this Spring.

“Once I decided to pursue this path of coaching in the Bay Area, I called [Bridgewater-Raritan head coach Chuck Apel] and was like: ‘I want to come coach against you’,” Grill said after the game. “This [Bridgewater-Raritan] program means so much to me. My family moved away from here, so I don’t really have a reason to come back as much. So it’s an opportunity and a forcing function for me to come back. But I think when you live far away, you lose how much you appreciate your experiences. Once I decided that we were coming back here, it was an opportunity for me to reconnect, find a new appreciation and value for what this program means to me, and what this program means to our community.”

When Grill was a star defenseman for Bridgewater-Raritan, the Turf 2 field that his Marin Catholic Wildcats squad played on was not built yet; the Panthers played their home games behind Turf 2 on John Basilone Memorial Field that spring of 2011.

In 2011, Grill was one of three boys’ lacrosse All-Americans (Tyler Barbarich: now an assistant coach with the Panthers, and Ryan Hollingsworth were the other two) on a Bridgewater-Raritan squad that went 20-2 in a season capped off by a 6-5 victory against Summit High School in the Tournament of Champions (TOC) state final  on June 11, 2011, which was the first of three TOC titles won by the Panthers, which went on to capture the state title in 2012 and 2015. To go along with the 2011 trophy.

The NJSIAA eliminated the TOC at the conclusion of the 2022 season, which saw Bridgewater-Raritan win the Group 4 state title before being eliminated in the TOC semifinals by Rumson-Fair Haven High School.

After graduating from Bridgewater-Raritan High School, Grill went on to star at Marquette University, where he was selected to the All Big East first team in back-to-back years before helping the Golden Eagles secure their first Big East title in 2016 and berth in that year’s NCAA Tournament.

Marquette was  edged by one goal against the eventual national champion, the University of North Carolina, in that tournament’s opening round. Nearly three months later in August 2016, he helped the Denver Outlaws of the Premier Lacrosse League (PLL) win the second of its three championships in franchise history. His most recent season as a professional lacrosse player came as a member of the Waterdogs Lacrosse Club in 2021.

Now a high school head coach in 2023, Grill has been determined to give back to the game he is so passionate about while leading a great group of young men at Marin Catholic, which is located just north of San Francisco.

“Right now, I am just trying to get our guys to care,” Grill reflected. “I just care so much about the sport as a whole and my experiences in it. Just trying to deliver that emotion, vulnerability, and teach our guys that, if you have a great experience in this sport, it can translate into all of your successes in life.”

And his Wildcats squad came out swinging out of the gate against Bridgewater-Raritan on this Friday morning.

Marin Catholic struck first when Will Mangino scored halfway into the opening period. But Bridgewater-Raritan junior Daine Kostes won the ensuing faceoff and scored immediately in transition to knot the score during a day where he dominated to a 14-for-18 finish at the center X. After one of seven saves by Marin Catholic goalkeeper Tanner Warne, Auggie Chapman then connected on a dish from Matt Bailey to give the Wildcats a 2-1 lead with 4:27 left in the period. Immediately after one of eight first-half turnovers forced by Marin Catholic’s defense: very likely to the delight of their head coach and former All-American defenseman while at Bridgewater-Raritan, Tate Sedlachek connected for his first of a team-high three goals to give the California school  a 3-1 lead with 9:18 left in the second quarter.

But after trailing by two goals early in a come-from-behind 6-5 victory  against rival Ridge High School on Wednesday, April 12, the Panthers rallied yet again against Marin Catholic.

Sophomore Andrew Childs (one goal, three assists) first found DJ Verkade, who scored the first of his two goals for Bridgewater-Raritan. Two minutes later, senior Matt Maciolek connected on the first of his two goals to tie the game at 3-3 with 6:22 left in the first half. Senior Colin Kurdyla then scored the first of his two goals not even a minute later to give the Panthers their first lead of the game.

Following another turnover forced by the Wildcats’ defense, Jake Holmes then scored the equalizer with 3:42 to play in the first half before Bridgewater-Raritan senior Alex Delierre (four goals, two assists) scored twice in the closing minutes of the first half to put Bridgewater-Raritan ahead for good on the way to a game high six-point morning. His latter goal in this span came five seconds before the buzzer on a dish from senior Tom Tremarco (one  goal, three assists) to give the Panthers a 6-4 lead at halftime.

“We started slow in the beginning, but towards halftime and towards the end of the game, we started playing together as a team and we really came together to put it in the back of the net,” Delierre said of his team’s performance after the game. “It started on the defense with Will [Kasica] and Luke [Cifuentes], turning over the ball, and getting it to the offense to finish it. The offense was drawing the double, leaving me open on the back side, so it ended up working out.”

After goals by Verkade and Kurdyla, Bridgewater-Raritan then quickly doubled its lead to 8-4 with 7:07 left in a third quarter that saw the Panthers only commit one turnover as a team after being charged with four each in the first and second periods.

With 5:55 left in the period, Sedlachek then scored for Marin Catholic 12 seconds into a man-up opportunity for the Wildcats after a Bridgewater-Raritan penalty.

From there, it was virtually all Bridgewater-Raritan.

Childs found Maciolek just over a minute later to extend the Panthers’ lead to 9-5 before Sedlachek completed his hat trick with 1:31 left in the third quarter to cut Bridgewater-Raritan’s lead to three goals. This was the final goal scored by Marin Catholic, which ultimately won the turnover battle 14-10. Bridgewater-Raritan junior goalkeeper Cam Kurdyla, the younger brother of Colin, made seven saves in the second half, and the Panthers erupted for all five goals of the fourth quarter to pull away for their 14-6 victory.

Bridgewater-Raritan outshot the Wildcats 32-21 overall, and Delierre scored two goals with two assists alone in the fourth quarter, which also saw Tremarco, Childs, and senior Ryan Prickett each score goals with sophomore Nick DiEsso picking up an assist to cap off the Panthers’ big day.

But again, this meeting between Bridgewater-Raritan and Marin Catholic meant a lot more to the Bridgewater-Raritan community than the final score.

Colin Kurdyla is the Bridgewater-Raritan Class of 2023 senior recipient of Michael Bruce’s No. 8 jersey, which Grill was also selected to wear in honor of Bruce back in his senior season in 2011.

Every year to this day, one Bridgewater-Raritan boys’ lacrosse senior is awarded the highest honor of wearing No. 8 in memory of Bruce, who was a senior in 1988 and played attack for the Bridgewater-Raritan East Minutemen. Tragically, Bruce became fully paralyzed after getting into a horrible car accident on his way to take the SAT exam in the fall of that year. Bruce sadly passed away in 2000, but his legacy, memory, and spirit lives on forever in the Bridgewater-Raritan community and beyond.

Especially given the importance of No. 8 to Bridgewater-Raritan, it was special to see Colin Kurdyla square off against Grill’s Marin Catholic squad.

“I think it’s kind of like a full circle moment,” said Colin Kurdyla after the game. “BJ [Grill] obviously represented the No. 8  pretty darn well. It’s cool to see, and cool for them to come out all the way from California. Playing against a fellow Bridgewater-Raritan alum and No. 8, it just means a little more today. I think once we settled down and we played the way we know how to play, settling down on offense especially, our defense really kept us in that game in the first. Once we got our groove in the offense, we got moving. I know guys like Tom [Tremarco] and Alex [Delierre] that really set the pace on offense, and it just kind of flowed from there.”

Perhaps the one blemish on this amazing day was the absence from the sidelines of hall of fame coach Chuck Apel, who coached Grill in 2011. The legendary Bridgewater-Raritan coach will soon return to the sidelines for his 44th season while he continues to recover from a medical issue. His son, Matt Apel, a 2000 Bridgewater-Raritan High School graduate, has been assisting his dad for 14 years, and he is presently serving as the program’s head coach.

Matt Apel assisted his dad in 2011 when Grill was a senior. And now, 12 years later, Grill and Apel coached against each other.  And with such familiarity between them, Apel knew had to prepare his Panthers squad accordingly.

“It was exactly what we knew it was going to be,” said Matt Apel of his team’s matchup against Marin Catholic. “Their team plays just like [BJ Grill] played. They’re high energy, into it, they want to be there, and excited to play. They’re well-coached, disciplined, and athletic. They were good kids and it was a good game. It’s a tough road for them because it was three games in a row in the heat with the travel, so all credit to them. They played fantastic and had us on the ropes a little bit. I think they got a little tired at the end because of the circumstances. If they had a little bit more time, it would have been closer in the second half. But it’s just what it is. They came with the energy, and we had to fight the whole way.”

After taking down Hillsborough, Ridge, and now Marin Catholic to close out Spring Break, Apel has guided the defending Group 4 state champion Bridgewater-Raritan to a 5-0 start to the 2023 season.

Although the Panthers are the only undefeated team left in the Skyland Conference just under two weeks into the season, Bridgewater-Raritan will look to immediately turn the page and get ready for its next matchups when school resumes from Spring Break.

“It means nothing,” Matt Apel went on to say of his team’s undefeated start to the season. “Watchung Hills is going to be very good. They have a good junior class, a couple of good seniors, and they are well-coached. Phillipsburg is going to be a challenge on the road, and then we have [Rumson-Fair Haven]. You’re only as good as your next game. 5-0 doesn’t really mean much to us. It’s nice, but it is always about the next game. Because the reality is, you have to win the next one. No one cares about what you just did; once it’s over, now it’s over. Now you have to win the next one.”

“We really gritted out two wins this week,” Colin Kurdyla said of his team’s Spring Break triumphs over Ridge and Marin Catholic. “It was not easy. Coming from Ridge, playing a really tough Marin Catholic team, we really had to gut it out this week. I’m just really proud of our guys for the way we practiced and the way we played, even if we were out of rhythm during our Spring Break.”

As for Grill, who closed out a meaningful cross-country trip with a loss to his hometown team, his Marin Catholic team will fly back to the West Coast after winning one of its three games in three days in the Garden State—a 12-2  triumph at Montgomery on April 12. His team fell a day later by a score of 11-7 at Chatham, the  North Group 3 runner-up, which was led by Grill’s Waterdogs Lacrosse Club PLL teammate: Christian Scarpello. And that set the stage for Grill’s return to the campus of Bridgewater-Raritan High School.

But before he left Somerset County, Grill shared some words of wisdom for the current members of the Panthers, who will try to remain undefeated next when Watchung Hills Regional High School travels to Turf 2 on Wednesday, April 19, at 4 p.m. before Bridgewater-Raritan travels to Phillipsburg High School on Saturday, April 22, at 1 p.m.

“It’s just about buying into the culture of Bridgewater-Raritan lacrosse, listening to the coaching staff, and trusting that they have your best interests at heart,” Grill explained. “The life lessons that you are going to gain from this experience are going to translate to success when you move on. This is a foundational period and building block that will change your life if you let it.”

Very well spoken, Coach Grill.