By Scott Stump - Senior Editor
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BRICK - Holmdel coach Andy Carlstrom wishes he had a chance to play high school football as a senior, let alone participate in something like the upcoming Shore Gridiron Classic.
Toms River North coach Chip LaBarca Jr., on the other hand, is an alumnus of the game from his days as a star wideout at Toms River South in the 1980s and knows firsthand how special the experience can be when selected to the annual all-star football game pitting the top seniors from Monmouth County against their counterparts from Ocean County.
After guiding Holmdel to a school-record 10-win season and the National Division title in the fall, Carlstrom will now become part of the fabric of the Shore Gridiron Classic, formerly the All-Shore Classic and the Shore 44 All-Star Classic. He has been selected by the Shore Football Coaches Association, which is running the game, to head up the Monmouth County squad when it takes the field at 7 p.m. on July 18 at Brick Township High School for the annual showdown with Ocean County. Practices start on July 12 on the artificial turf fields at Holmdel and Toms River North.
It's an honor for Carlstrom, who went to Mater Dei and then finished up at Henry Hudson, which does not have a football team and did not have the current cooperative program that allows Henry Hudson kids to play football for Keyport. He expressed that to all the players during media day at Brick on Wednesday, where the players got to know one another while the coaches discussed what schemes they will employ and other details of the game. Huddy's Inn in Colts Neck supplied burgers and other refreshments for the players and the coaches as the march up to the game officially began.
Despite not playing at the end of high school, Carlstrom still went on to play collegiately at
Frostburg State in western Maryland, and he took Holmdel to new heights in only his second season as the head coach.
"It's a phenomenal honor because I didn't get the chance to play high school football as a senior,'' Carlstrom said. "Growing up in Monmouth County and knowing about this game when I was a kid and now having the opportunity to be the head coach is beyond words for me.''
Carlstrom and LaBarca addressed the players along with the dean of New Jersey coaching greats, Brick's Warren Wolf, New Jersey's career leader in wins. Each player received a game T-shirt while saying hello to old friends and meeting players who they smashed helmets against for the past four years.
LaBarca was once one of those players, an all-state wideout at Toms River South who played in the 1989 All-Shore Classic before going on to play at Penn State. His father, Chip LaBarca Sr., also coached in some of the earliest incarnations of the game during his state championship tenures at Keansburg and Toms River South.
"Don't remind of what year (I played in the game), I'm getting old,'' LaBarca Jr. joked. "I think it's very exciting, and it's about the relationships that you make that week of practice. I still have some friends from that week.''
Carlstrom and LaBarca also get the added bonus of coaching some of their top seniors in the game.
"We had a great senior class,'' Carlstrom said. "We have five guys on the (Monmouth County) team, and I'm so happy to get to coach them one more time. Plus, the talent that's on the roster, I've never coached a team with that much talent. It's like having a fantasy team.''
It was a fantasy season for LaBarca's Toms River North squad this past fall, as the Mariners went 12-0, finishing No. 1 in the DigitalSports Top 10 and winning the NJSIAA South Jersey Group IV title in LaBarca's second season as head coach. He will be coaching several of his players, although DigitalSports Defensive Player of the Year Zach Kane will not participating because he will already be down at the University of Miami, where he has a scholarship as a linebacker.
"It was an exciting season for us at North, and it's going to be an outstanding way as a coaching staff to finish out the year by coaching the kids from North,'' he said.
E-mail: stump@digitalsports.com
