Ok, there were a lot of “repeats”: Not just the wave scenario itself (2 small days followed by a magically blessed finals day with fun bowls), but almost all of the Divisions had repeat winners and repeat scenarios. Let me explain …

Let’s start with the blatantly obvious; The FINS Mens Open deja vu’ed itself into the exact same setup as last year with Virginia Beach’s Blayr Barton and New Jersey’s Rob Kelly landing in a carbon copy of last year’s final (even similar wave conditions) with Blayr once again edging-out Rob in a hard-fought, very equal battle by only .39 of a point! Other notable standouts this year were Gavin Mitchell, Cruz Dinofa and Finn Law who also put in high scores through the quarterfinal and semi rounds.

There were two “elephants in the room” in the PlayaBowls Womens division: The obvious would most definitely be the continued dominating run of Cassidy McClain’s 11th, yes ELEVENTH victory! Cassidy’s dominance is the bar that has been set in which the current and future East Coast womens competitors are tasked with striving for. She continues to deliver dominating performances every year not just at the Belmar Pro, but wherever she competes. The other elephant in the room would have to be the uprising of young local Keira Soleau who was nipping at Cassidy’s heels posting similar scoring to Cassidy as she battled through all her rounds. As expected, both landed in the final, and with no disrespect to the solid performances from Mia Gallagher and Niyah Rosen, it became the Cassidy vs. Keira show as Cassidy narrowly defended her title only beating out Keira by a tiny .13 margin!

The next repeat to talk about was the return battle of Rob Kelly vs. New Smyrna, FL’s Josh Nicastro for the FCS Masters title. Not only were they 1st & 2nd place again, but even the scores were almost the same as last year.

Pacifico Longboard standout, NJ local Jake DeMatteo redeemed himself from close 2nd place finishes in 2024 and 2025 by finally taking the win this year over prior longboard standouts Cooper Lysinger, Kevin DeWald and newcomer Kai Kuri.

The next repeat to talk about is the carbon copy of 2025’s Joe’s Surf Shack Sr Men final between Randy Townsend, Pat Emery, Corey Miller and Brian Dalton. The four horsemen met last year and jousted again this year with LBI legend Randall taking the win once again and Emery getting revenge on Corey Miller in upgrading his 3rd from last year to a 2nd place this year.

To repeat the repeats, Monmouth County’s own Jack Murphy cemented his legend status by taking his back-to-back 4th Legends division win over Gary Finnigan Sr, Lance O’Brien and Gerry Matthews in Sunday’s fun, clean afternoon bowls.

As you can imagine, the fun thing that was observed by the longboard categories (both the main, and the Legends) was the amount of waves caught. In many of the longboard heats in both divisions, the 10-wave maximum was achieved by at least 2 of the competitors in each heat throughout all of the heats. I mean, of course they did, right? 😎 In the EL Legends Longboard Final, Gary Finnegan Sr and Joe Gillen each caught 9 waves battling it out for 1st and 2nd place.

And last but not least, let’s circle back around to one of those elephants that were in the room of the PlayaBowls Womens final: the close 2nd place by Keira Soleau was redeemed when she convincingly beat 3 boys in the 1st ever Hoagitos Groms Open where Keira not only stole the show with her graceful style and talent beyond her years, but by winning the coolest trophy ever, a WWE style champions belt that I’m sure made all the other division winners jealous of her trophy! Keira has quite a standout style to her surfing and everyone is noticing. Y’all best be keeping an eye out for her in the future as she grows and develops her talent even further! We can assure you she has a promising future in surfing.

Congrats to all the competitors, and, a heartfelt THANK YOU to all of this year’s sponsors and staff in making for a smooth and successful 2026 event. Cheers!

~ Mark Sisom