Hundreds race into the ocean at First Day at the Beach
OCEAN CITY — “We’re embracing life,” Betty Jones said after she and her husband, Cliff, raced into the chilly Atlantic Ocean on New Year’s Day during Ocean City’s First Dip.
“It makes you feel alive before you die,” Cliff said, laughing.
Tradition made them come to Ocean City from Greenwich Township. “We wouldn’t miss it,” Cliff said. “This is my second time actually going in,” Betty added, but she had accompanied Cliff in the past.
“He’s 75 and I’m 70,” Betty said.
Cliff was adorned in body paint, with “Shark Bait” written across his chest and back in big bold letters. There was writing elsewhere as well with various body parts advertised as a smorgasbord for the toothy sea-dwellers, including pork belly (“that’s the largest one”), drumstick, frog legs and rump.
Asked if he were trying to direct sharks where to nibble on him, Cliff said he did come across a few First Day at the Beach plungers dressed as sharks. “I invited them to chase me around,” he said.
Cliff and Betty were among a massive crowd of people who gathered on the beach just north of the Ocean City Music Pier as hundreds watched during the annual event in America’s Greatest Family Resort, during which people celebrate the new year by racing into the ocean. It wasn’t one of the warmest days, with temperatures in the low to mid-40s, but far from one of the harshest either.
“Today is definitely not the coldest day I’ve done it,” retired Ocean City firefighter Brian Green said. “Back in the early ’90s it was like 5 degrees and snowing and the water was like 36 degrees, so this should be a cakewalk.
“I got out of the car and thought, ‘We can do this. No problem,’” he said, laughing.
Green said he has been doing a New Year’s Day plunge since the early 1980s when he was surprised by people running into the surf.
“I was hanging out with the surfers on the Seventh Street beach and we watched some people go in. We said we have to go see what they’re doing. They’re crazy,” Green said. “They went in with nothing and we were in wetsuits. The next year we came, we met them and went in with them and carried on from there. Now it’s this. It’s fun. I think I only missed one year in the last 44 years and that was because I was in leg traction.”
Green said his whole family does the First Dip except for his wife. “She’s a little freaky with the cold,” he said. “My daughter and her friends from Newberry College, it’s their first experience. It will be cool.”
“I actually like to do this. I’m an athlete, so it’s like an ice bath,” said Green’s daughter Presley, who plays lacrosse and was a goalie for the Ocean City High School team. She noted her ice baths aren’t that frequent. “I don’t really do it that often, but why do an ice bath when you have an ocean?”
Mia Pancoast of Upper Township, a field hockey player at Newberry and former player for OCHS, had a simple reason for going in: “Peer pressure,” she said, laughing. “I haven’t come here before. I haven’t done a polar plunge before so I’m kind of scared.”
Sophia Spencer, 14, of Pennsylvania, said she was doing the plunge “for fun. I did this before. It was fun, but it was a little cold. I wore a wetsuit last year, but I’m not this year.”
Her dad, Kevin, was with her. So which of the two has the least common sense when it comes to swimming in the ocean in January?
“Definitely me,” said her father. “I’ve done it several times. It’s a fun tradition.”
He enjoys spending his first day of the year in Ocean City because “there are thousands of people running into the cold water. There’s nothing like it.”
First-timer Vincenzo Ritchie, who lives in Vineland but whose family has a home in Ocean City, was preparing to take the plunge as the rest of his family watched. “They all think I’m crazy,” he said. The Pittsgrove Middle School student said he happened across the event and decided it sounded fun.
His family was in full support.
“We stand behind him no matter what,” said his dad, David Ritchie. “I would do it too, but my wife doesn’t think it’s a good idea.”
So he stands behind him, but only on land? “If I have to go get him, I’ll go get him,” he said, smiling but bundled up like his wife, Maria, and mother-in-law, Olivia.
“I’m just doing it for fun mostly and a welcome to 2025,” said Egg Harbor Township High School junior Natalie Yankovitch, who was a first-timer in Ocean City but had done a polar plunge in Atlantic City.
Three Ocean City High School students were in bathing suits waiting for the plunge to begin.
Holly Aiken, a sophomore, said she was taking the plunge “to get like a fresh start for the new year and a full refresh.”
Sadie Surgent, a freshman, said she was “just here to have fun and to support my friends.” She acknowledged there was some peer pressure involved. “A little bit,” she said, smiling.
Shae Holahan, another OCHS freshman, was philosophical.
“Because why not?” Shae said, laughing.
A whole group of high school-age boys from Sicklerville was decked out in superhero costumes. They said they come to the event because it’s fun and they enjoy picking out interesting outfits. Last year they all wore tutus. “It’s a yearly thing at this point and to enjoy the beautiful day,” they said. Next year they might be Minions, one laughed. “It’s yet to be decided, but we’ll come up with something good.”
An older couple, Jack Jacobs and Ann Pinchak of Houston, Texas, were taking their time heading into the water after most of the revelers had rushed in quickly and rushed back out just as fast.
“My husband’s family lives in Hammonton and he loves Ocean City. We’re here just to experience it all. I love it,” Ann said.
“It is great,” Jack added.
He admitted they weren’t jumping in headfirst. “We’re going to ease our way in.”
– STORY and PHOTOS by DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
