Blue No More: After Two Years of Heartbreak, Rumson Ends Manasquan’s Sectional Title Run

MANASQUAN — Last March, Blake Ahmann watched the NJSIAA Central Jersey Group II boys basketball championship game from the west end of the Manasquan High School gym in Rumson-Fair Haven student section and like most of the members of Rumson’s vaunted Dawg Pound, he felt sick watching the home team celebrate its sixth consecutive sectional championship at his school’s expense.

Unlike all the other Rumson students in the stands that night, Ahmann knew there was something he could do about it. So, when newly-hired Rumson-Fair Haven boys basketball coach George Sourlis watched Ahmann throw down a dunk in a summer-league game at Victory Park in Rumson, it was an a-ha moment for both player and coach.

“I went to a summer game and I dunked it,” Ahmann said. “Coach was super hyped.”

Eight months after that fateful dunk, in that same Manasquan gym, Ahmann sparked a championship-clinching run with a steal and dunk that sent that same Dawg Pound that he stood in a year ago into a frenzy and got his coach far more hyped than he was at Victory Park.

It was a defining moment in a game of many long-awaited moments for Rumson-Fair Haven, which avenged two straight championship losses at Manasquan by conquering the six-time defending sectional champion, 47-33, on Friday night. By ending the Warriors’ six-season run as a sectional champion, Rumson captured its first Central Group II title since 2022, when Manasquan won the Central Jersey Group III title.

“I was in the student section last year and it was not a good feeling,” Ahmann said. “I’m glad I got to avenge them. It might have crossed my mind at the time, but I knew I would have to put a lot of work in to get to where I am today. I’m glad I did and I love every guy on this team. It means the world to me. I’m so happy for everyone on this team.”

“He does all the things that people don’t write about, other than rebounding,” Sourlis said of Ahmann. “He’s got one (made three-pointer) all year. He is just our warrior and he just does all the stuff that he has to do to help the team win. Not for any fanfare, not for any pats on the back. He is just a throwback kid with an amazing attitude and great leadership skills.”

The championship comes in the first year with Sourlis in charge and makes him just the third ever Shore Conference coach to lead both a girls team and a boys team to a sectional championship. Sourlis, who built the Rumson girls program into a Group II powerhouse and has won more than 700 combined games between the two sports, joins Ken O’Donnell (Neptune boys and girls) and Joe Whalen (Long Branch boys and St. Rose girls) as coaches who have won sectionals on both the boys and girls side.

“I wanted these kids to experience how good it feels to win something like this,” said Sourlis, who won 14 sectional championships as the Rumson girls coach and took the Red Bank Regional boys team to the Central Group III final in 2024, but lost to Freehold Boro. “I have been fortunate enough to coach a lot of good players in my career that won these games. I wanted them to experience what it means and now they will have a bond for life.”

While Ahmann and Sourlis were not part of the Rumson-Fair Haven program in either of the past two years, senior Luke Cruz was. The 6-foot-9 senior has been as prolific an offensive player as there is in the Shore Conference over the past two seasons, but Manasquan’s gym was not kind to him and his team in both the 2024 and 2025 championship games in Central Jersey Group II.

After scoring a combined 13 points in the past two championship games, Cruz was on top of his game Friday, scoring a game-high 17 points while grabbing 13 rebounds and demoralizing Manasquan’s offense with four blocked shots.

“We know the history,” Cruz said. “We know there are so many people whose careers ended on this court. All the guys were locked-in. We knew one slip-up could get them back in the game, so we kept our foot on the gas and built the lead up.”

“I though Cruz in the first half, especially early, tried to impose his will and to put our team on his back,” Sourlis said. “That’s pretty much what we see from him all the time.”

In Rumson’s sectional semifinal win at Ocean on Tuesday, Cruz scored 33 points and sank five three-pointers, but in a more defensive-minded game against a physical Manasquan squad, Cruz set the tone early by establishing himself in the paint and on the glass. All seven of Rumson’s first-quarter field goals came inside the paint and 15 of the 18 made field goals in the game by the Bulldogs were in the paint. Cruz also hit two of the shots outside the paint as well.

“We know we’re great inside,” Cruz said. “We’re one of the best inside teams, so we wanted to keep going in there. The threes started coming as soon as they started moving in, so it worked  out. The game plan was amazing.”

“We’re really not a three-point-shooting team,” Sourlis said. “We can shoot the three, but we want to get to the rim. The way we can get rebounds and putbacks, it gives us multiple ways to score instead of relying on three-point shots to get the bulk of our scoring. I think that’s what makes us harder to guard. We can get to the rim and then you’ve got to keep us off the glass. If you do prevent us from getting to the rim, we have guys who can shoot it.”

Rumson’s early aggression also manifested itself on the defensive end, where Sourlis deployed a full-court press that helped Rumson jump out to a 4-0 lead and forced Manasquan into an early timeout.

“We had to execute, we had to play tougher, we had to do things, rebound better and we know that they are the six-time champion for a reason,” said Sourlis, who once led the Rumson girls to 10 consecutive sectional titles from 2000 to 2009. “We had to take it to them right out of the gate. We did things differently”

“We had to bring so much more intensity,” Cruz said. “I have played here so many times. I know how tough it is. We have so many kids who haven’t played varsity before and who haven’t even played basketball that much, so it was just great trying to be a leader for the guys and to keep them all together. It turned out great. We all were locked in.”

With Cruz and Ahmann leading the way, each of Rumson’s three other starters made an impact as well. Moore finished with eight points and six rebounds from a guard spot, while Lydon chipped in seven and hit the Bulldogs’ lone three-pointer of the game — a shot from the right wing that gave Rumson a 29-20 lead in the third quarter. Freshman Clint Martin added a pair of drives to the basket in a five-point game, including a fourth-quarter finish that pushed the Bulldogs’ lead to 34-25.

Manasquan junior Logan Cleveland book-ended a jumper by Cruz to pull the Warriors within 36-29 with 4:39 left, at which point Manasquan took a timeout hoping to prime itself for another memorable finish. Two years ago, Rumson let an seven-point lead slip away in the final two minutes at Manasquan, so the Bulldogs knew their job was far from finished.

After turning the ball over out of the timeout, Rumson started its game-clinching run thanks to Ahmann. The senior jumped in front of a pass and took it in for a one-handed dunk that unleashed the Dawg Pound, as well as the Bulldogs on the court. After a Manasquan miss, Rumson attacked in transition and Lydon converted an acrobatic finish at the rim for a 40-29 lead — the largest of the game to that point.

Lydon’s tough finish was the final field goal of the game for Rumson, which went 7-for-10 from the free-throw line down the stretch and held Manasquan to one field goal after Cleveland’s basket with 4:39 left.

Cleveland led Manasquan with 13 points and senior Jack O’Reilly grabbed 10 rebounds despite sitting most of the first half with two fouls. With Cleveland limited to four rebounds and O’Reilly scoreless, Rumson did not let the front-court duo dominate like they did in a 43-32 win at Rumson on Feb. 3.

Playing Friday’s game without head coach Andrew Bilodeau while he recovers from a heart attack he suffered Tuesday night, Manasquan got an emotional lift from junior Rey Weinseimer. After missing Manasquan’s first 25 games while recovering from surgery to repair a torn meniscus, Weinseimer came off the bench early in the first quarter for his season debut and on his second shot attempt, buried a three-pointer from the left corner, causing the crowd to erupt.

The was the highlight of the night for Weinseimer, who finished with three points and four rebounds.

“I thought there might be a Willis Reed moment,” Sourlis said. “In fairness to the kid, he hasn’t played in three-to-six months and to put him in a game like this, as special as he is as a player, it’s still going to be hard. But the kid is dynamic, he is special and he changes everything for them. He’s got a great career ahead of him.”

Cruz, Lydon, Ahmann and fellow seniors Zach Halpern and Drew Cavise were all in eighth grade the last time Rumson-Fair Haven won a sectional championship, so Friday’s victory makes them just the fifth Rumson boys team to win a sectional championship — four of which have come since the 2016-17 season. Now that they have joined that exclusive group, these Bulldogs will attempt to go where no Rumson team has ever gone before: a Group II championship game. In its program history, the Rumson boys are 0-4 in Group II sectional championship games, including losses to Camden in 2017 and 2022 and a loss to Haddonfield in 2018.

This season started with the Bulldogs dreaming of a state championship, but three different injury-related absences for Cruz and February struggles both with an without Cruz in the lineup, left Rumson at a crossroads as the team licked its wounds from a Shore Conference Tournament loss to Holmdel.

Since that SCT loss, Rumson is 5-0 and one win away from making program history.

“The entire season, we knew there was a bigger picture,” Cruz said. “Regular season didn’t matter as long as we were healthy going into the playoffs. This is as healthy as we have been all season. We have had some struggles but we’re playing great right now. Everyone is happy, everyone is healthy. We are all seniors, so we want to keep going.”