Popular high school sweethearts dead after single-car crash in New Jersey

Jeffrey Szatkowski, 17 - who played football and baseball for Spotswood High School - was driving his cheerleading girlfriend, Nicole Surace, 18, when the 2004 Mustang suddenly swerved off the East Brunswick road on Saturday. The popular couple was rushed to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, but they could not be saved.

A high school athlete and his cheerleader girlfriend died after a single-car wreck in New Jersey over the weekend, officials said.

Jeffrey Szatkowski, 17, was driving a 2004 Mustang with his sweetheart, 18-year-old Nicole Surace, sitting in the passenger seat when he suddenly lost control of the car and drove off an East Brunswick road on Saturday, authorities said.

The sports car slammed into a telephone pole, flipped and struck a tree before it landed on its roof, the New Jersey Star-Ledger reported.

who began dating Spotswood High School in Middlesex County — were rushed to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, where they died.

“They were both such quality, first-class kids,” the school’s athletic director, Bill Visokay, told the Asbury Park Press. “A parent should never have to bury their own kids and my heart and the heart of the school community is really out to both families.”

Szatkowski, who played for the school’s varsity football and baseball teams, began dating Surace before she graduated last May.

It’s important for everybody to realize what great families these two kids come from,” Glenn Fredricks, Szatkowski’s baseball coach, told the newspaper.

“I think everybody is in shock. Our hearts break for everybody. You can’t really put into words what a big loss this is for our entire community. It goes way beyond sports. We are hurting.”