7 Mile Teams Hitting Their Strides in Lifeguard Circuit
Erich Wolf crashes through the surf at the start of the singles rowing race in the Beschen-Callahan Lifeguard Championships. Wolf went on to win the race against competitors from six other Cape May County beach patrols.
Avalon veterans and Stone Harbor upstarts notched interesting beginnings to the 2017 lifeguard racing campaign.
For Avalon, traditionally strong efforts from rowers Erich Wolf, Matt Wolf and Jake Enright repeated the pattern of recent years. Stone Harbor, meanwhile, posted some early strong results from young leaders like John Ruskey.
The patrols took different paths to reach midseason form.
“We usually take a little while to get rolling,” Avalon Captain Murray Wolf says, laughing. “When we get our momentum, these guys usually catch on.”
Avalon surged to an apparent victory at the Beschen-Callahans, but its surf-dash relay team was disqualified from a win because of a uniform violation, a missing swim cap. That forced a three-way team-title tie broken by Sea Isle City in the doubles row.
“We won except for the blue cap,” Wolf says about the relay event, for which one participant did not wear it. “That’s all behind us now. What we take from it is that we’re pretty happy with where we are with the boat, but we need to work on the swim.”
Erich Wolf triumphed handily for Avalon in the Beschen-Callahan singles row. Matt Wolf and Enright were third in the doubles row, John Anthony fourth in the rescue board and Sean Stevens prevailed in the can run. Erich Wolf continued rounding into form with the Beschen-Callahan triumph.
“I feel like I am hitting my stride now,” says Wolf, who teaches physical education and coaches baseball at the Atlantic County Institute of Technology. “You are in school mostly through June and it takes a good month to round everything out. It’s been a few good weeks now, rowing hard every day and getting into the kind of shape I need to be in for the big races.”
Some of Avalon’s rising stars made early-season contributions.
The women’s team finished third in the Longport Women’s Invitational, one of its best outings in many years.
“We are proud of them and quite happy for what the women’s team did,” Murray Wolf says. “Usually the girls don’t stick around as many years on the patrol, but we are getting a few who are now and things are starting to come together.” MacKenzie Zavawski, Ali Stever, Taylor Ferry and Emma Fiorucci finished third for Avalon in the relay. McKensie Meyer was fourth in the swim, while Danielle Smith and Reilly Bonner delivered a fourth-place effort in the row.
John Anthony showed some versatility in the season-opening Cape May County Championships. He came in fourth in the rescue board and fifth in the run-swim. Erich Wolf was second in the singles row.
The Avalon relay team of Enright, Greg Laing, Brendan Carney and Martin Caron finished second.
STONE HARBOR
Unlike some units that field veterans every year, Stone Harbor often sports new talent. It caught some early magic this summer with a trio of athletes who embody the lifeguard journey. Ruskey, the wily, 22-year-old veteran and seventh-year guard, launched the campaign with a singles-row victory in the Cape May County Championships. Rookie guard Justin McClellan, from West Chester, Pa., notched a fifth-place finish in the half-mile swim to secure his first point for the patrol. And third-year participant Chip Schroder took third in the run-swim, marking a gratifying patrol debut. The recent high-school graduate broke through this season, earning the right to represent Stone Harbor for the first time.
“What’s nice about having a young patrol is how easy it is to make friends,” says McClellan, a rising freshman at Franklin and Marshall University. “It’s exciting to swim in the ocean, it’s a great challenge. There are no walls (like the typical indoor pool), you are not diving in, you are swimming over the waves. It takes a lot of getting used to.”
Ruskey chuckles at the concept of being the “grizzled” veteran. It seems that his life is just starting. Ruskey recently graduated from Rutgers with a degree in health administration and lined up a job at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
“There will be a lot to do with helping administer chemotherapy, scheduling patients, making sure they are on top of their prescriptions, etc.,” he says. “I’m going for a master’s, too.”
Because of those commitments, Ruskey believes this will be his final lifeguard campaign. He enjoys one more summer victory lap in Stone Harbor, where he grew up. Ruskey has also been a longtime force on Stone Harbor’s relay teams. He began this season with a bang, wiring the field in the Cape May Counties and surviving a late run from Avalon’s Erich Wolf, who finished second.
“Because I am 6-foot-4, I was able to sprint out with my boat and get a quick lead,” he recalls. “After I hit the turn, a boat hit me and one of my oars popped up. It took a couple seconds to reposition the boat and then it was just a great race to the finish.”
Ruskey, who rode like a veteran, already has an advanced sense of business. He has an e-commerce product line, Eclipse Threads, and recently launched a website, eclipsethreads.com.
Schroder, meanwhile, is gaining the spoils of perseverance. Two years ago, he made the patrol. This year, he earned the right to represent it and finished third in the Cape May Counties run-swim. About a mile-and-a-quarter of the journey was a beach run.
“I joined cross country and track in the winter,” Schroder says of his senior year of high school near Reading, Pa. “That definitely helped out with the run portion of the tryout. This is a wonderful job, guarding lives. Older guards help me be more alert, make sure that I am doing the right thing and keeping everybody out of danger.”
Schroder will soon be taking classes at Providence College.
Ruskey, McClellan and Schroder form an interesting trio. Two are entering college. One is entering the business world. Yet right now, they enjoy the summer splash.
