Commentary: State title is a just reward for players and coaches who do it the right way

Posted: March 16th 2026

The Ocean City High School boys basketball team celebrates its state championship victory at Rutgers University after being presented with a banner and the trophy.

By BRIAN CUNNIFF

CapeAtlanticLive.com

The Ocean City High School boys basketball program has been remarkably consistent under John Bruno.

Whether the Raiders win 20 games or eight games in a given season, you can count on them to be organized, disciplined and difficult to play against.

Well, this season they won 26 games, including the last one – Sunday’s state Group III championship game at Rutgers University.

It’s a just reward for a group of players and a coaching staff that do things the right way.

First, the players.

Led by a veteran group – starters Luke Tjoumarkaris, Dean Lappin, Alec Bell and Tighe Olek and sixth man Chris Pontari are all seniors – this Ocean City team is a throwback, not just in the way they played but also in the way they were developed.

Along with junior Josh Lenko, those seniors have been playing basketball together in some form since the fifth grade. They didn’t magically come together through AAU basketball or by joining forces via transfer. All that experience together bred trust and familiarity, which resulted in a beautiful brand of unselfish basketball.

That was never more evident than on Sunday, when Ocean City posted an incredible 17 assists on 20 field goals. The Raiders made four three-pointers, but otherwise scored nearly all of the rest of their baskets from areas around the rim, often thanks to hard cuts, solid screens and precision passing that consistently sliced open the defense of a really good 21-win Colonia team.

“I think our teamwork together, our patience, everything – it’s just an amalgamation of what we’ve been working on the past two years, actually the last eight years,” Tjoumakaris said. “We’ve kind of had the same kids on the team since fifth grade, so it’s really special to see this moment.”

There may not be a college-level player among them – although you’d have to think some Division III school would be keen enough to be interested in one or two of them – but this Ocean City team made the sum of its parts add up to something exponentially greater than its individual talent.

“That’s this team in a nutshell, because 17 assists is quite a bit,” Bruno said. “When you share the ball you have a happy team and when you have a happy team you have a chance to win. They’ve done this all year long. They realize it’s about the team and not the individuals. It’s about all of us and everyone has their moments.”

The Raiders’ unselfishness and willingness to make the extra pass helped develop them into one of the most offensively efficient teams in the state. The team shot nearly 50 percent from the floor for the season.

The team likes playing together so much that some of the players even expressed some sadness that the journey together is complete.

“It’s a little bittersweet for me,” Lenko said, “because I have another year but all my best friends that I’ve been playing with are leaving.”

Bruno gave a nod to assistant coach Ryan Gill, who serves as a sort of offensive coordinator for the team, for the work he’s done in helping construct Ocean City’s offensive style of play.

“I don’t think Ryan ever gets enough credit for what he does for us,” Bruno said.

Bruno certainly deserves credit, too. He’s now won three sectional titles in his 37 seasons as the program’s leader, the most recent two coming in the last two seasons. The other came in 1999, just after he had to survive an inexplicable witch-hunting campaign by a few people who were looking to remove him as coach. It’s something that today seems practically impossible to have happened.

Great coaches don’t need state championships to validate the work they’ve done. But if there’s any coach who’s deserved one, it’s Bruno.

He doesn’t recruit players. He doesn’t go out of his way to add transfers. He just shows up in the gym three days before Thanksgiving each year for the start of a close-to-four-month journey to coach neighborhood kids to the best of his ability. Yes, Ocean City has benefited in the recent past through some choice-school students. But for the most part, the Raiders have been built on local players from Upper Township, Ocean City and Sea Isle City. This season, those neighborhood kids were good enough to win the final game after an unforgettable six-game run through the state playoffs.

It’s Ocean City’s first state championship in boys basketball since 1964, back when Bruno himself was in his early days of grammar school.

“Every year, everyone says they want to win a state championship, but for us, it’s never really on our radar,” Bruno said. “We talk about South Jersey and trying to get to that (title) game. Winning a state title, I really don’t understand the scope of this. But the best thing about it is watching these kids enjoying it. It’s surreal to me. I just don’t know if we ever expected to win a state title. We just take each game as it comes.

“I think this is one of those things where it doesn’t hit you. Maybe later I’ll be like, ‘Wait, what did we just do?’ I’ve done this for so long that I like to think I’ve figured out what’s important, and what’s important is all the fun they had leading up to this. The practice after the Westampton Tech game (in the state semifinal) was one of the most fun practices we’ve had, and that’s because this group just loves being together.”

Bruno, now with 537 career wins, deflected any praise heaped toward him and, as usual, gave it to his players. He’s one of the few coaches out there who realizes that the program doesn’t belong to him. It belongs to the players. It’s his job, with the help of Gill and fellow assistant Tommy Ballezzi, to be the adults to organize things and provide discipline and direction.

They’ve done that as well as anyone. And now they have reaped the benefits by becoming state championship coaches.

“I always thought state championships were for the other guy,” Bruno said. “They were for Haddonfield or Shawnee or Atlantic City. Somebody else.”

Again, though, Bruno made it about the players. As it should be.

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel but I know I’m happy for them,” Bruno said as he pointed in the direction of his players celebrating in a sheltered area just off to the side of the Jersey Mike’s Arena floor. “Part of my heart is going to them right now. For me, this is more of a relief than anything. But for them, this is something they’ll remember and live with the rest of their lives. That’s what I’m happiest about.”

When the game ended, there was no posturing for cameras or any attention-grabbing gyrations by any of the players. There instead was simple unbridled joy that spilled into a massive group hug near the Ocean City bench at the final buzzer. After the postgame handshake with Colonia’s players and coaches and the ensuing trophy presentation were complete, many of the players poignantly ran into the stands to share the moment with family members and friends, providing another great example of how this team represented all that is good in high school sports.