Long Island's Only Surf Team Competes Regionally

LONG BEACH, NY — It might not be the season for surfing, but given the weather, it's a good time to think warm thoughts.

Students at Long Beach High School are the only ones on Long Island who can take surfing as a program.

Started by late surfing teacher Danny Bobis more than a decade ago, they have been using the signature waves of Long Beach as part of their extracurricular activities.

With no other schools in Nassau or Suffolk counties offering the unique sport, they must travel to New Jersey to find surfing students. Long Beach will have a new foe in the spring as a school in Queens recently started adding surfing.

"We're hoping that the exposure will [help] others to start teams in other schools that have surfers," Cliff Skudin, coach of the Long Beach High School surf team, told Patch. "Surfing is an Olympic sport now. There [are] definitely surfers all around Long Island that go to high school."

The surfing class spends much of its time "remotely" using the backdrop of the famed boardwalk.

"Our largest natural resource is the ocean; utilizing that and being outdoors is so important," Skudin said, who joined the high school in 2020. He shares coaching duties with Anthony Balsamo.

Take a visit to Long Beach in the summer and you'll see the surfboards in session with seasoned athletes.

However, Skudin said his students range from the well-conditioned to wet behind the ears.

"We have some beginners, intermediate and advanced," he said.

Typically, each semester Skudin has approximately 30 students on the team. The classes are held during after-school hours. But in 2021, surfing crashed into the curriculum for the first time with four schools in the district. Skudin was part of a surf-therapy program for life skills students.

Skudin is also the school's physical education teacher and runs his own surfing school, of course, in Long Beach.

Surfing is in Skudin's blood.

"Teaching surfing in my family has been going on for three generations in this town," he said.

Although Skudin is surfing all year round, as a teacher he hits the waves in the fall and spring.

While Skudin admitted his students don't have Olympic potential, they are good enough to compete regionally.

At an end-of-season Northeast tournament in New Jersey, Skudin's squad finished fifth among at least 20 schools.