By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
On X @GDsullysays
EAST RUTHERFORD — Heading into Week 8 of the 2025 season, the Cedar Creek High football team was feeling pretty good about itself. The Pirates had ripped off seven straight wins after a season-opening loss to Old Bridge at the Battle at the Beach, and they had put up at least 35 points in all of those games.
But sometimes it takes a little taste of humble pie to get where you really want to go.
On Oct. 24, Cedar Creek traveled to Ocean City and lost, 20-17, in overtime, and the Pirates were shut out completely after halftime. Since then, Cedar Creek has been on a mission.
That mission was accomplished on Friday afternoon at MetLife Stadium as the Pirates put on a show in the Group 3 state championship game, dominating defending champ Northern Valley/Old Tappan 34-7. Coach James Melody’s group captured the first overall state title in the short but already storied history of Cedar Creek football. The Pirates have only been playing football for 15 years but already have four sectional titles and now a state championship.
“It’s unbelievable. The whole postseason run has been just incredible. My kids are so tough, so resilient. I’m going to miss those seniors a lot. It was such a special group, and they did such special things throughout this run. It’s unbelievable,” Melody, who came to the school from a highly successful Union program, said. “Culture wins. Talent doesn’t always win, but culture wins. That’s the biggest thing we preach to these kids. We’re going to continue to fight and do it the right way. This was a culture postseason run. There were a lot of tough games in there and we were able to get it done.”
Cedar Creek slipped past Pleasantville, 15-12, in the second round of the sectional playoffs in early November and has been on a tear ever since. The Pirates slugged it out with Mainland in the sectional final, winning 34-28 by scoring on a long pass play in the final minute, then they hung 48 points on Holmdel in the state semifinals.
After a scoreless first quarter on Friday, the Pirates showed their athleticism and talent by taking a 14-0 lead into halftime, then extending that lead to 20-0 when Gyan King took the opening kickoff of the second half 84 yards to the house. Quarterback Frenchmon Bethea only had to throw the ball nine times, as Cedar Creek (12-2) piled up 260 rushing yards on an Old Tappan team that came into the game undefeated. Senior running back Aamir Dunbar rushed 22 times for a game-high 117 yards and scored the first two touchdowns. It was the 11th time this season that he rushed for more than 100 yards, as he fell just 64 yards shy of the coveted 2,000-yard mark. But he finished his career with more than 4,600 yards and 47 touchdowns.
“It feels good. Doing it with such a good team and such a great coach — it’s love. Our guys have lasted the whole season, through injuries. We’ll play whenever; we play with injuries. (My guys) are tough, every single one of them,” Dunbar said. “We saw all the stuff (the media) was talking about, how we were going to lose. Everybody wrote us off. Nobody had us winning, but we came out and performed. This is a fairytale ending. Me and the other seniors, we dreamed about this. It’s historic. We talk about the 2021 team, and now they’re going to be talking about the 2025 team.”
That 2021 team went 13-0 and won a regional championship — as far as a team could go before overall group state championships were implemented the following year. Now, the Pirates have that coveted blue NJSIAA state championship trophy.
“I’m speechless. I’m very proud of this team. We just made history. First state championship in school history. It’s amazing,” said senior Jahmir Campfield, who racked up 96 yards and a touchdown on just eight carries. “We came out and attacked it at practice (after the Ocean City loss). We knew we had to double down and come out; if we wanted to accomplish the dreams we had for this season, we knew we had to work harder. We ended up putting it all together, had everyone where they needed to be, and we played as a team.”
Cedar Creek’s stars were the difference against Old Tappan (12-1), as Dunbar and Campfield accounted for nearly all of the Pirates’ rushing and receiving yards, while King shined on special teams and defense with his kickoff return as well as grabbing one of three Cedar Creek interceptions. Old Tappan answered King’s heroics with a touchdown of its own to cut the deficit to 20-7 early in the third quarter, but Cedar Creek scored twice more before the period ended, on a 52-yard run by Campfield and a 14-yard scamper by Bethea.
“I expected nothing less from them,” Melody said of his seniors. “It’s what they’ve been doing for the four years they’ve been here. It’s just an incredible group.”
Added Campfield, “our offense has been tremendous, and we’ve been stopping teams and capitalizing on that by putting up scores. This feels amazing. I’m speechless. It hasn’t really hit me yet.”
