Even some off-course hurdles did not stand in the way of Bridgewater-Raritan High School junior Kaitlyn Chu’s path to another milestone.
For multiple campuses across the Garden State, Tuesday morning marked the first day of state-mandated spring New Jersey Student Learning Assessments (NJSLA). At Bridgewater-Raritan High School, these online assessments were administered to all ninth and 11th graders during the first half of the school day from 7:20 a.m. to 10:13 a.m. for either English Language Arts (ELA), Science, or Mathematics from Tuesday, April 28 to Thursday, April 30.
Day one of NJSLA testing at Bridgewater-Raritan High School also fell on the day of the Somerset County Track and Field Championships.
This extended an already-long day for members of the Panthers’ boys’ and girls’ track and field squad, who all had to find ways to keep their legs fresh for the county’s premier spring event.
As the event began just before 2:30 p.m. a short trip down Route 206 at Hillsborough High School, the day for Bridgewater-Raritan’s track and field teams did not end via their early dismissal from campus. While everyone successfully adjusted to the first day of NJSLA testing for as much as a two-hour span during the aforementioned testing window at Bridgewater-Raritan High School, freshmen or juniors on the Panthers’ track and field teams, like Chu, who completed their first wave of testing, did not have much downtime after unit lunch.
Just under three hours later, at 1 p.m., Bridgewater-Raritan’s bus departed for Hillsborough, but Chu’s lone event in the girls’ 3,200-meter run was not until the very end of the meet.
Not only did Chu overcome the challenge of a long wait until her big race, which launched just before 5:30 p.m., after a brief drizzle also blanketed the track everyone eventually ran on.
Given how well she ran on Tuesday in her spring season debut, no one would have known she was just coming back from a minor injury.
“I was injured about three weeks ago, but I kept on using an elliptical and cross training a lot just to make sure I kept my fitness up,” revealed Chu, who began her productive junior year by winning the Somerset County Cross-Country Championships in the fall and most recently won the 3,200-meter run in the winter at the girls’ NJSIAA North New Jersey, Section 2, Group 4, Indoor Track and Field Championships.
“While cross-training, I gradually came back.”
Fittingly, she also rallied from behind to win yet another gold medal.
After collecting at least one individual title for the Panthers in both the fall and winter, Chu completed her school-year trifecta by winning the girls’ 3200-meter run (11:09.61) for the first time in the spring at the 2026 Somerset County Outdoor Track and Field Championships. This highlighted a third-place team finish (38 points) for the Bridgewater-Raritan High School girls’ track and field team on Tuesday, April 28, in Hillsborough for the Panthers’ best team ranking at this event since 2002.
“I made sure to just leave my legs up and go in here with the expectation that this is just my season opener,” explained Chu of how she prepared for her event on Tuesday, which started with her sitting at a desk during her approximately three-hour testing window: one that began approximately 10 hours before the starting gun of her girls’ 3,200-meter run at Hillsborough High School.
“I just wanted to take it really chill and easy today, and I think that’s what I did the first six laps, but I just kind of kicked a little bit at the end.”
On the girls’ side, Hillsborough High School (163.25 points) and Ridge High School (122 points) cruised to gold and silver medals, respectively. While the Raiders ultimately were crowned champions of Somerset County on their home field and Ridge took second place by a whopping 84 points over the Panthers, Bridgewater-Raritan ultimately edged out Franklin Township High School (35.25 points) for the overall girls’ bronze medal.
This capped off the Panthers’ best finish at this event in 24 years.
In addition to Chu’s gold medal result, scoring for the Bridgewater-Raritan girls’ team were junior Maddy Corbitt (second place, discus, 109-1 mark), freshman Charlotte Dixon (third place, javelin, 95-2 mark) senior Dahlia Adams (third place, 400-meter hurdles, 1:06.90 & sixth place, 400-meter dash, 1:00.51), junior Violette Cornfield (fourth place, pole vault, 9-6 mark), junior Meera Buddhikot (fifth place, high jump, 4-8 mark), and junior Lana Guelich (sixth place, 1600-meter run).
Although this did not result in points toward Bridgewater-Raritan’s team score, freshman Juliet Casamento qualified for the finals in the girls’ 100-meter dash with a preliminary time of 13.28 seconds, en route to a ninth-place finish (13.34 seconds).
Points were awarded to the top six finishers at each event.
Buddhikot and Casamento also produced consecutive top 10 marks at eighth place (16-0) and ninth place (15-9), respectively, in the girls’ long jump. Rounding out the top 10 performances for Bridgewater-Raritan’s girls’ team were freshman Mila Daniels (seventh place, 1600-meter run, 5:31.73), the girls’ 4x400-meter relay team (eighth place, 4:24.60), junior Emma Kiplia (eighth place, javelin, 67-10 mark), and senior Tori Torres (10th place, high jump, 4-6 mark).
“This is going to make our team really confident,” Chu went on to say of how her team’s performance will set the Panthers up for their return trip to Hillsborough High School, where the Skyland Conference Championships will be contested next at 2 p.m. Tuesday, May 5, in Hillsborough.
“All of us will know that like we did this week, we can also do better, run even faster, throw even further, and jump even further next week.”
Bridgewater-Raritan High School also produced a ninth-place finish (32 points) on the boys’ side, which saw Ridge High School (124 points) win the Somerset County Championships over runner-up Somerville High School (61.67 points) and bronze medalist Montgomery High School (60 points).
Junior Jordan Estomata led the way on the boys’ side when he set a Bridgewater-Raritan school record in the shot put with a throw of 51-0. He broke the record set in 2000 by Kyle Budinscak, who threw 48-8.
Estomata placed third in the shot put at the county meet, while he earned a silver medal in the discus with a toss of 149-5.
Juniors Justin Reid and Max Pasewaldt both finished consecutively at fifth place (23.19 seconds) and sixth place (23.22 seconds), respectively, in the boys’ 200-meter dash finals. Pasewaldt also qualified for the finals of the boys’ 100-meter dash with a preliminary time of 11.48 seconds en route to a seventh-place finish (11.41 seconds), which was just 0.03 seconds away from the cutoff for a top-six scoring result.
In the boys’ 3,200-meter run, juniors Zachary Urbanowicz (fourth place, 9:42.65) and Zane Hoffman (sixth place, 9:49.23) both collected scoring results.
Also scoring for the Bridgewater-Raritan boys’ team were sophomore Jeremiah Wiley (fourth place, triple jump, 40-3.75 mark), junior Andrew Ciccotelli (fifth place, pole vault, 11-0 mark), junior Kenneth Graham (fifth place, 400-meter dash, 50.67 seconds), junior Clayton Williams (sixth place, 110-meter hurdles finals, 16.18 seconds), and the boys’ 4x400 meter relay team (sixth place,
3:30.18).
Wiley (seventh place, 400-meter dash finals, 51.75 seconds) Reid (eighth place, long jump, 19-3.75 mark & 10th place, 100-meter dash, 11.59 seconds) also added top 10 non-scoring boys’ results, which also included junior Jamelle Jones (seventh place, triple jump, 39-0.5 mark), sophomore Gary Jaeger (eighth place, pole vault, 10-0 mark), junior Pon Rathinam (10th place, 110-meter hurdles, 17.21 seconds), and junior Justin Albanese (10th place, discus, 119-5 mark).
Full 2026 Somerset County Outdoor Track and Field Championships results can be found courtesy of MileSplitNJ by clicking here.
After next week’s Skyland Conference Championships, the Panthers will compete at the NJSIAA North New Jersey, Section 2, Group 4 Track and Field Championships, which will be contested starting at 3 p.m. Friday, May 15, and 9 a.m. Saturday, May 16, at Ridge High School.