Winning Back the Kerrs Title Made Avalon’s Season

Dolan Grisbaum pops out of the surf as part of an amazing first season of ocean competition.

This one had special meaning.

The cornerstone of the Avalon Beach Patrol season, beside its safety measures and a possible bonus with individual or team victories at the South Jersey championships, is the Kerr Memorials. Avalon hosts this annual event, featuring about two-thirds of the 15 patrols from Brigantine to Cape May, and places must-win emphasis on it.

In 2021, the must-win came.

Avalon restored command of the Kerrs with a dominating victory late in July. The triumph came two years after Wildwood Crest had snapped Avalon’s eight-year win streak, causing frustration that intensified when the 2020 race season was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“You always feel that you know your own course and that you are supposed to win an event when it’s yours,” says Matt Wolf, the first-year Avalon Beach Patrol chief who helped orchestrate many of those team victories as a doubles rower.

“Within lifeguard racing, you always know your own beach and your own water better than someone else. You don’t want someone else winning at your beach.

“Part of the culture when I first started here was that we better win this race or else. I don’t believe I ever knew what ‘or else’ meant, thank goodness,” he laughs. “But I feel the same way now about this race because of who we are honoring.”

The race was named in honor of Dave Kerr, a 1980 South Jerseys champion who succumbed to cancer at age 28 in 1981. The patrol later renamed a surf-dash race to honor the memory of Brett Fitzpatrick, who worked as an EMT, paramedic, and lifeguard. He died in what was ruled an accidental drowning in 2014, at age 25.

Then-Avalon Beach Patrol captain Murray Wolf, Matt’s father, initially instilled the significance of a Kerr Memorials triumph to the patrol back in the 1980s. Fittingly, in his first role as a former captain this season, Murray Wolf addressed this patrol about its meaning. Some newcomers don’t know the emotional connection Avalon has to this event.

“Dave and Brett were people who represented the ideals we want for the Avalon Beach Patrol,” Matt Wolf says. “Many of the young guards did not know them. Dave was an icon to me and Brett was a close friend.

“These are people that represent the ideals we want the Avalon Beach Patrol to be. They represent the values our organization stood for 50 years ago, the values we stand for today and the values we will stand for 50 years from now. It is absolutely important that we honor their legacy.”

This year, the honor was definitive.

Avalon earned two first-place finishes and earned points in each of the five competitions to win the event handily.

Scoring was five points for first, three for second and one for third. Wolf says Dave Kerr believed first-place point value should outweigh second and third combined. Kerr also believed in widespread participation and thus his memorial event has five competitions, two more than the standard South Jerseys lineup of doubles row, swim and singles row.

Avalon secured first-place finishes via the swim with Dolan Grisbaum and the Ironman relay of Grisbaum, Ryan Barton, Gary James Nagle and Dave Giulian.

Erich Wolf and Jack Glomb chipped in three points for a second-place doubles row. Wolf added a third place in the singles row. The surf-dash team of John McDonnell, Harry Rohfling, Conall Sweeney, Sean Geary and Kieran Shirdan produced three points for second.

Jack Glomb and Erich Wolf (bow) finished second in the doubles at the Kerr Memorials.

These were the official results:

Team scoring: 1. Avalon 17; 2. Sea Ise City 8; 3. Wildwood Crest 8. 4. Stone Harbor 6; 5. Wildwood 5.

Doubles row: Danny Rogers-Pat Scannapieco (Sea Isle) 14:27; Erich Wolf-Jack Glomb (Avalon) 14:38; Pat Bakey-Jake Klecko (Avalon) 14:39

Swim: Dolan Grisbaum (Avalon) 14:36; Jack Levari (Stone Harbor) 15:46; Molly Kowal (North Wildwood) 16:04.

Singles row: Darrick Kobierowski (Wildwood Crest) 5:32; Rogers (Sea Isle) 5:33; Wolf (Avalon) 5:34.

Ironman medley: Grisbaum, Ryan Barton, Gary James Nagle-Dave Giulian (Avalon) 12:05; Levari, James Gusser, Tom Lake- Kurt Kircher (Stone Harbor) 12:58; Nick Patino, Colin Hess, Ron Ayres-John Steiger (Wildwood Crest) 12:59.

Surf dash: Tom Sampson, Matt Comas, Brendan Lewis, Dylan Hagan Ben Melle (Wildwood); John McDonnell, Harry Rohfling, Conall Sweeney, Sean Geary, Kieran Shierdan (Avalon); Bakey, Brett Pedersen, Klecko, Luke Love, Tom Derer (Wildwood Crest).

The Kerrs also served as a preview for the South Jerseys, which were held 2½ weeks later.

At the circuit’s biggest stage, in Longport on Aug. 13, Rogers won the singles row. Scannapieco and Rogers were second in the doubles row. Longport won its fifth straight team title and Sea Isle City was an impressive second.

Grisbaum capped his strong season as an Avalon swimmer, earning second. He was a bright light in a year for which Avalon lost Matt Wolf to administration and had to spread Erich Wolf across both singles and doubles competitions.

Erich Wolf, who had won a pair of South Jerseys singles rowing championships, also became a mentor to Jack Glomb in the doubles. Glomb is the son of former South Jerseys champion John Glomb.

Grisbaum, an Ocean City High School graduate, had been in the Avalon Beach Patrol sights for a while. Avalon BP administrators Shane McGrath and Ian Keyser are the male and female swim coaches at Ocean City High School. They recruited Grisbaum, soon headed for Boston University.

“They convinced me to come out here and I did,” says Grisbaum, who produced a definitive swim triumph by more than a minute at the Kerrs. “They told me about the tradition and how important this event is. I was very happy to make them proud.”

Besides winning the event, Avalon presented a $5,000 Brett Fitzpatrick Memorial Scholarship award to Matt Gariano, who will attend Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, Pa. The award has been given since 2014.

Scholarship funds are raised by the Avalon Beach Patrol Alumni Association. Vince and Andrea Fitzpatrick, Brett’s parents, select the winning candidate and often present the award.

“I was surprised and excited to receive this,” Gariano says. “I never did meet Brett, but I think this honors the qualities he showed, which was teamwork, passion and brotherhood.

“You can’t have a better job in the world than lifeguarding. It teaches you to have responsibility, even outside the job,” Gariano adds. “It prepares you for later in life, when you will have a lot of responsibility.”

With the team victory and the scholarship award, Avalon paid two tributes to its fallen beach-patrol friends this lifeguard-racing season.

They will take that every time.