FINAL DAY: 2018 Monster Energy Belmar Pro – 2023 Playa Bowls Belmar Pro

WOW!! Let’s start off with the fact that for the first time in the event’s history, due to an intensifying forecast with stormy conditions for finals day, and since this is fixed-date event that doesn’t run on a waiting period, we decided to jam all the remaining heats in on Saturday and finish a day early using simultaneous heats running between the north and south halves of the beach !! And with the last heat ending as the streetlights went on, we pulled it off!

In a slightly building trend of NE wind swell combined with a small ESE groundswell, the regular foot Mens competitors had a slight advantage of chest high right bowls going into the wind, resulting in what seemed like an air show contest with literally everyone ripping! Many impressive boosts were done to the cheers of those that stuck out the challenging weather. Highlight performances came from Jersey locals like Rob Kelly, Logan Kamen, Ben Gravy and Alex Brooks and some ripping East Coasters like former winner Vince Boulanger From MD, Logan Hayes from FL, Dallas Tolson from NC, and a returning Lucas Rogers from VA, but it was South Carolina’s Luke Gordon that consistently surfed his way to a win in the challenging conditions.

The ladies took the water hungry to rip and impressed everyone in the tricky waves, including solid surfing from NJ ripper Casey Kwiecinski, and Belmar’s own Morgan Iglay, but in the final Maddie Ryan and last year’s Womens winner from South NJ Cassidy McClain battled it out wave for wave with Cassidy dominating into another 1st place finish for the 2nd year in a row.

In both the Masters and Legends heats the experienced showed in how to handle onshore surf, as if they’ve done this before, 😉 .. .and for the Masters it was an all out battle between Jeff Myers, Randy Townsend and Dallas Tolson, but NSB, Florida’s Josh Nicastro took them out for the Masters win. In the Legends all four competitors also equally went wave-for-wave with SRH’s Jersey Legend Jack Murphy leading the heat until in the last couple minutes Manasquan’s Chris Rooney worked a wave right up to the sand that edge over Murphy by just 1 point for the win.

In longboard, many hoots were given for how impressive a few of the competitor’s handle the quick-transitioned, onshore conditions with some high tech moves from Kevin Dewald, Steve McClean and Katon Fortney, but Costa Rica’s Dorian Torres took the win.

We’d like to extend a very special THANK YOU everyone for the magical team effort it took to pull the event off in such a condensed time and adjust on the fly, especially those who volunteered to chip in, to all the sponsors for helping us pull it off!