The Ocean City High School surf team is back from the National Scholastic Surfing Assocation (NSSA) National Championship, and two of the team's surfers advanced out of the preliminary rounds.
Pat McCarron advanced in the men's shortboard division, and Caroline Bowman advanced in the women's division.
Ocean City finished third in Northeast Regional competition on Nov. 3 (2013) to advance to the nationals. The Red Raiders had won the regional for 16 years in a row and for 23 of the past 25 years. The high school competition format includes categories for shortboards, longboards and women.
Ocean City, which fields multiple teams in the regional, sent its "A" team, consisting of McCarron, Matt Aromando, Sean Bowman, Frank Brady, Luke Kelly, Townie Godfrey, Peter Anderson, Abby Lyons and Caroline Bowman to Salt Beach in Dana Point, Calif., for the national competition on June 14 and 15.
Coaches Mark Miedama and Matt Carey went along with the team. The Nationals had high school teams from California, Hawaii, Florida and New Jersey. The competition was won by Kamehameha High School from Honolulu, Hawaii.
The waves went flat for many of the Ocean City surfers as the competition began, but McCarron and Bowman advanced against the best high school surfers in the country but were eliminated before the final rounds.
(Photos in the gallery above are courtesy of Tom Aromando.)
