AVALON – A third-place finish in the singles row, a second-place finish in the doubles row and a “shocking” win in the swim by Ocean City High School grad Dolan Grisbaum netted a repeat victory for the Avalon Beach Patrol in Monday evening’s South Jersey Lifeguard Championship.
The AVP won the 2024 title, earning it the right to host the 2025 championship for the 15 beach patrols in Cape May and Atlantic counties.
It was a beautiful August evening at the 35th Street beach with the sun shining, nice breezes, warm temperatures in the air and the ocean and relatively calm seas, a considerable change from Friday, when rough conditions postponed the race.
The 2023 South Jersey champions, the Brigantine Beach Patrol, got things started by winning the doubles row with brothers Joe and Brendan Savell, but Avalon’s Dave Giulian and Gary Nagle were right behind them.
Joe Savell said he and his brother had been practicing a lot this week, working on their starts and turns at the flag, but the race was close the whole way. “I think on our start we ramped it up a little more,” he said. “I’m so glad to win. We’ve been working hard all year.”
“Even though we went into it as defending champs, I was new to it,” added Brendan Savell. Last year brother Jack teamed with Joe to win the doubles. “There’s a lot of adversity, being able to learn the stroke and everything, learning how to move in the boat as efficiently as they did last year,” Brendan said. “Definitely all the hard work and all the training we put in, especially this last week, just paid off.”
The Savells’ win gave Brigantine an early 5-4 lead, with Atlantic City third, Longport fourth and Margate fifth.
It didn’t take long for that to change.
Grisbaum, a 2021 OCHS grad who set records in the pool for the Red Raiders and went on to swim for Boston University, emerged from the surf first, bracketed by Margate’s Zach Vasser, a former standout swimmer for Mainland Regional High School, and Atlantic City’s Charlie Schreiner.
Grisbaum looked surprised when he got up to run for the finish and saw himself in first place.
“I don’t even know what happened,” he said. “I have no idea how I won.” Grisbaum expected to get third.
Noting he had Schreiner to one side and Vasser to the other, “I figured I had a good sandwich so I was like I’m probably on the best course.” As he got closer to shore he began to realize he could win.
“So I was coming in and I was like, oh, I’m beating Zach, I think I’m beating Charles. I might as well finish strong.”
Winning, he said, felt “shocking.”
“Charles is like an absolute monster in the ocean and Zach is an Ivy League runner-up. (He swims for Columbia University.) They’re both amazing swimmers so I had expectations that I was going to try my best and hope for the best.”
Grisbaum is a repeat South Jersey champion, winning in 2022, but he didn’t plan on competing for the AVP this summer.
“I wasn’t even going to swim this year. I told my chief, ‘I’m not racing this summer,’” he said, but AVP Chief Matt Wolf convinced him.
After the swim, Avalon led with 9 points, Margate had 6 and Brigantine had 6.
Ryan Finnegan, a South Jersey champ last year in the singles row, finished third, putting the AVP over the top for the title, but the real race was between Longport veteran Mike McGrath and Margate’s Chris Spiers, both two-time winners. (McGrath won in 2016 and 2018 and Spiers in 2019 and 2022.)
“I was like, one of us is getting our third (title) tonight,” McGrath said after the race. “That was a battle between me and Chris. … Chris is a great singles rower and we’ve been rowing against each other for a while.”
The rowers came in practically side by side with McGrath winning by a second.
In part he wanted to make up for the fourth-place finish in the doubles row with partner Sean Dufffey. They’ve been rowing since their early 20s; McGrath turns 40 in September.
“It’s not easy to win. I think Sean and I all year are just trying to prove that we still belong.”
McGrath said it was “bumpy” out on the course once the rowers got through the breakers closer to shore.
So what does it take for the old dogs to do well against the younger rowers? “It’s all grit at this point,” McGrath said. “We just put the work in. I mean we put just as much, if not more, work in now than when we were 20 and 23 when we first started.”
OCHS girls swim coach Ian Keyser, a lieutenant on the AVP, ran the South Jersey race. Fellow AVP Lt. Shane McGrath is the boys swim coach at OCHS.
2025 South Jersey
Lifeguard Championship
Teams: Avalon 12, Margate 9, Longport 7, Brigantine 6, Atlantic City 6
Doubles row (1.5 miles): 1. Joe and Brendan Savell (Brigantine) 14:42; 2. Dave Giulian and Gary Nagle (Avalon) 14:45; 3. Vince Granese and Nick Guidara (Atlantic City) 14:51; 4. Mike McGrath and Sean Duffey (Longport) 15:12; 5. Bob Bechtel and Hayden Smallwood (Margate) 15:13
Swim (three-fourths mile): 1. Dolan Grisbaum (Avalon) 15:34; 2. Zach Vasser (Margate) 15:40; 3. Charles Schreiner (Atlantic City) 15:41; 4. Logan Manning (Upper Township) 16:45; 5. James Haney (Brigantine) 16:50.
Singles row (quarter mile): 1. McGrath (Longport) 6:28; 2. Chris Spiers (Margate) 6:29; 3. Ryan Finnegan (Avalon) 6:39; 4. Mike Fitzpatrick (Cape May) 6:44; 5. Danny Rogers (Sea Isle City) 6:50
– STORY and PHOTOS by DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
