Acupuncture in Marlboro, NJ

PHILADELPHIA – In sixth grade, Jack Seidler was cut during tryouts for Marlboro Memorial Middle School’s basketball team.

Ten years later, he’s suiting up for UCLA in the NCAA Tournament.

Seidler’s journey - from that middle-school disappointment, then starring at Marlboro High School to walking on at UCLA - comes full circle Friday at Philadelphia’s Xfinity Mobile Arena, where the Bruins take on Central Florida at 7:25 p.m. It’s a little over an hour from home, so his parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles will be there.

“It’s a dream come true,” he said Thursday in UCLA’s locker room.

The 6-foot-4 redshirt junior guard has appeared in six games this season, scoring one bucket and grabbing five boards. His main contribution is as a member of the Bruins' scout team – studying the upcoming opponent’s film and simulating its plays in practice.

“It’s definitely a change coming from Marlboro High School, where I was the guy, and then to take a back seat type of role,” he said. “You’re doing whatever you can to help the team. I love it – you’re around great basketball players, great basketball minds. I’ve learned so much since I got here. It’s been an amazing experience.”

Seidler was the 2022 All-Shore Player of the Year after leading Marlboro to its first-ever Shore Conference Tournament title. That experience served as a springboard.

“It had never been done there, we did it, and it gives you confidence that you can achieve anything you put your mind to,” he said.

Seidler set out for UCLA at the invitation of Bruins’ associate head coach Darren Savino, a Jersey City native and St. Anthony High School graduate whose Garden State connections run deep. He’ll earn a bachelor’s degree in sociology this spring and has his sights set on becoming a sports agent.

“We call him Jerry Maguire,” UCLA head coach Mick Cronin said, referring to the 1990s Tom Cruise movie about a sports agent. “My players are younger, I had to make sure they saw the movie…and Jack is Jerry Maguire.”

Cronin said it’s refreshing, in the free-agency era, to still have some four-year players in his program.

“Jack Seidler, he's just been awesome for us,” he said. “Stories like that, those kind of guys, they're what makes us different than the pros.”

To have Mick Cronin praising you at the NCAA Tournament – it’s a long way from that day Seidler was cut as a sixth-grader. There’s a lesson here for every hooper with a dream.

“Anything is possible,” Seidler said, “if you keep working hard and keep believing in yourself.”

Jerry Carino has covered the New Jersey sports scene since 1996 and the college basketball beat since 2003. Contact him at jcarino@gannettnj.com.

COLTS NECK, NJ — A New Jersey school board will not be moving forward with a board member’s suggestion to rename one of the district’s schools for President Trump.

During a Colts Neck Board of Education meeting on Wednesday night, Board President Angelique Volpe said the district will not be moving forward with Board Member Robert Scales’ proposal to rename one of their schools as “Donald J. Trump Primary School.”

The proposal was first made earlier in March, during one of the board’s previous meetings.

“On Wednesday, March 4th, during the New Business section of the board’s committee of a whole meeting — a portion of the meeting where we discuss new programs and new opportunities for consideration — a sitting board member brought forth the idea of a potential name change of our primary school,” Volpe said.

“Please be reminded, many ideas are brought forward every single meeting, especially during New Business. Some advance forward, others take on a hybrid variation, while others cease to proceed,” she continued. “With that said, I want to make it clear – very clear – the board will not be moving forward on the proposed name change of Conover Road Primary School.”

Though the board won’t be moving forward with Scales’ renaming proposal, many residents still showed up to the meeting to voice their opposition to a potential renaming, with some even suggesting alternate names that poked fun at the idea.

Kyler Dineen, a representative of NJ Voters For Church & State Separation, read the results of a contest that the organization ran to find alternative names for Conover Road Primary School, should the board ever pursue renaming in the future.

Suggested names ranged from Bruce Springsteen Elementary to Jon Bon Jovi Elementary, Queen Latifah Elementary, and Jon Stewart Elementary.

Some even sent in “Conover Road Primary School” as a submission, imploring the board to keep the school’s current name intact.

“One was ‘Bored of Education Elementary,’” Dinenn said. “With the submitter writing ‘This is a waste of time and resources and is bringing much unwanted, negative attention to the Colts Neck School System. The Board of Education should instead just focus on children’s education and not this entirely unnecessary nonsense.’”

The NJ Voters For Church & State Separation are far from the first to quip about the board’s suggested renaming, either.

During a recent episode of Saturday Night Live (SNL), Weekend Update Co-Host Michael Che commented on the proposal as well, joking that a “New Jersey school board” was considering renaming a school to “Trump Elementary: Home Of The Fightin’ Allegations."

Though some residents attended Wednesday night’s meeting to object to the renaming idea, some also came to voice their support.

One resident, Alice Finney, said there are over 4,000 schools renamed after U.S. presidents, and while Scales’ renaming proposal didn’t make it far, she did think “it was a great idea.”

“President Trump is one of the best presidents of this century,” Finney said. “I think there’s a lot of misinformation, and I just hope that some of the young people really listen to all sorts of information and actually listen to what is produced by the White House and what some of the politicians are saying, because I think there’s a lot of secondhand information that’s coming out, and I think history will tell the truth in the end.”

During Wednesday night’s meeting, Volpe also directly addressed Scales regarding his proposal, adding that “nothing was ever moving forward, it was just a nice sentiment.”

“I appreciated it, Mr. Scales,” she said. “I’m sorry that this got blown out of proportion.”

To watch a full recording of Wednesday night’s school board meeting, you can click here.

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Rachel Halpern has grown up with family who work in the medical field. Now, she's using her own dental practice to serve her community.

A patient room at Excel Endodontics. (Rachel Halpern, DDS)

MARLBORO, NJ — Rachel Halpern is no stranger to the medical field.

A lifelong resident of Monmouth County, Halpern’s father worked as an OB/GYN for 40 years, and her sister also works as a dental hygienist.

In high school, Halpern gained experience in the field by shadowing at her sister’s hygienist practice, but it was when she went on to shadow an endodontist that she found her true calling.

“That’s where I fell in love with the specialty of endodontics,” Halpern told Patch. “Because people come in with a lot of pain, but they also want to save their tooth. We can do both.”

While an oral surgeon might be where you go to have a tooth taken out, endodontics is a dental specialty that aims to treat pain or infection with a focus on saving the patients’ natural teeth, Halpern said.

After attending Columbia University’s College of Dental Medicine, Halpern went on to New York University for her endodontic specialty.

Once she graduated from NYU, she then worked at an endodontic practice in Toms River for a little over three years before opening her own practice, Excel Endodontics, in Marlboro.

According to Halpern, the inspiration to open her own practice came both from her desire to serve her community and to be closer to home for her family.

“I’m a mother of three kids who are six, three and one,” Halpern said. “I wanted to be able to serve my community, but also be home for them as well and have a better commute [she was previously driving around 45 minutes each way to work in Toms River].”

“So after three-and-a-half years, that’s when I decided to officially open Excel Endodontics,” she continued.

At Excel, Halpern and her team offer a variety of services that range from root canals (with a specialty of performing them on more “difficult teeth” such as back molars) to retreatments, treating cracked teeth, microsurgery/apicoectomies and more.

In addition to Excel’s services, the practice also has a 3D X-ray machine called a CBCT scan, which allows doctors to diagnose the problem, see if there’s an infection (and if so, how big it is), and allows them to see how many roots are in a tooth or if there’s a crack or fracture.

“That really sets us apart from the general dentist,” she said. “They don’t have this 3D scan, but we do. It allows us to diagnose the problem and then do the treatment properly.”

While Halpern said most people don’t know about endodontic services until it’s something they need, it doesn’t make the practice any less important, especially considering how many (or few) endodontists may be in a person’s area.

“There’s a lot of dentists, but not many endodontic specialists, and a lot of them have a very long wait to be seen,” she said. “Some could have a four to six week wait. But if you have a lot of pain in your tooth, you can’t really wait four to six weeks to be seen.”

It’s because of this need for endodontists that Halpern said it was important to her to get Excel open and ready to go so people could come in for treatment.

Since the practice's soft-opening in November, she said Excel has had a warm welcome from Marlboro and the greater Monmouth and Ocean County communities.

“People have been coming in, and they’ve been very happy that we’re either close to their house, or that we take their insurance (some other endodontic practices may not),” Halpern said. “So they’re happy to come here.”

To learn more about Excel Endodontics, you can visit their website.

Excel Endodontics is located at 475 County Route 520, Suite 102, Marlboro.

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If you grew up around Marlboro, Morganville, Freehold, Englishtown, or even Old Bridge, chances are you have a Meli’s Pizza story. Maybe it was after a Friday night football game, a quick slice after school, or one of those nights when nobody felt like cooking, and the answer was an easy call to Meli’s. It has quietly become one of those neighborhood spots that feels like part of the routine.

Meli’s Pizza in the Shoprite Plaza off Route 9 in Morganville is the kind of place that knows its town. Over the years, they have built strong connections with Marlboro’s schools, sports teams, and families. Walk in on a weekday afternoon, and you will probably see groups of students grabbing slices, still wearing their school gear, talking about the game, the test they just took, or weekend plans.

For many local teams and school events, Meli’s has been there to help out. Whether it is supporting school fundraisers, feeding hungry athletes after a big game, or simply being a reliable spot where kids and parents can meet up, they have become part of the rhythm of the community.

There are even sandwiches dedicated to area school teams. One of the most popular ones is the Marlboro Mustang hero. It's chicken parm in vodka sauce with a fresh-fried mozzarella wedge, a hot honey drizzle, and garlic bread. Be sure to try the Old Bridge Knight hero, Manalapan Braves hero, and the Freehold Bomber hero.

Meli's neighborhood reach goes further than just schools and teams. They believe collaborating with local businesses is just as important. Whether it be linking up with Mostly Smoked to make some killer BBQ pizza, or being part of community charity events with Livotis and Jersey Freeze to raise money. Yes, that Jersey Freeze! In fact, you can’t miss the freezer stocked with your favorite ice cream right when you walk in.

Meli's is competing in the Jersey Pizza Playoffs for a chance to win $10,000 in radio advertising. You can support Anthony and his staff simply by voting for them now and telling everyone you know to do the same.

MARLBORO, NJ — For the fifth year in a row, a team of students from Marlboro High School have been crowned the winners of the Monmouth County Consumer Bowl, a game-show-style competition that tests students’ knowledge of consumer-related information.

The 2026 Monmouth County Consumer Bowl, which is sponsored by the NJ Division of Consumer Affairs, was held on Feb. 26 at the Monmouth County Fire Academy in Howell.

Participating students for this year’s event included those from Freehold Township High School, Manalapan High School, Marlboro High School, Middletown South High School and Raritan High School.

It is the fifth year in a row that Marlboro High School students have been crowned winners of the event.

“On behalf of my fellow commissioners, I want to congratulate the Marlboro High School students for winning the 2026 Monmouth County Consumer Bowl,” Commissioner Director Thomas Arnone said.

“Marlboro has now won the County Consumer Bowl five years in a row and won the State championship in 2024 and 2025, which is an incredible accomplishment!” he continued. “We look forward to cheering them on as they move on to the next round.”

During the Consumer Bowl, students are testing on their understanding of the Consumer Fraud Act and how it’s applied to certain consumer-related topics, said Commissioner Erik Anderson, liaison to the Monmouth County Division of Consumer Affairs.

According to Anderson, the questions addressed topics such as home improvement contractors, the Lemon Law and the grandparent scam, along with tips to avoid scams associated with telemarketing, gift cards, cryptocurrency, identity theft, internet issues, amusement games and purchasing a pet.

Now that the team from Marlboro High School has won the Consumer Bowl, they’ll advance to compete in the Central Regional Consumer Bowl on April 28.

“Congratulations to the Marlboro team on their fifth consecutive victory and to all the participating high schools for their hard work,” Anderson said.

Marlboro High School students previously won the Monmouth County Consumer Bowl in 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. The members of this year’s winning team are:

The team’s teachers/advisers are Patrick Scinto and Nicole Bendik, and Marlboro High School’s principal is David Bleakley.

To learn more, you can visit the Monmouth County website.

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