OCEAN CITY – The Ocean City Surf Club’s 14th Annual Longboard Team Challenge this weekend is going green.
The Ocean City Surf Club (OCSC) is holding the 14th Annual Longboard Team Challenge, a weekend-long festival of contests and parties at different venues around the resort.
The annual event gets underway tonight with an Ocean City Legends party at the new Barn 34 beginning at 6 p.m. The OCSC and the entire surf community will get together to honor selected local surfers with a Legends induction.
On Saturday, the festivities will continue with the Longboard Team event at the beach at the Castle in the Sand on 37th Street from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. The contest will feature five-man teams from surf shops, local businesses, young grommets and old legends competing in a light-hearted format for longboard bragging rights.
On Sunday, June 7, the weekend’s festivities take on a more serious tone when the OCSC hosts a “Walk Da Plank” professional longboard invitational contest with cash prizes for the best of classic longboard riding. The brainchild of Chris Tilghman and Brad Hoffman, the event is entering its second year and will feature some of the top longboard surfers from all over the east coast. Local longboard surfers will also compete with $4,000 in prize money up for grabs.
OCSC Vice President Brad Hoffman announced this week the contests will be run completely off the grid as OSCS goes green to influence others to help protect the environment.
“We are linking up with some great supporters at Hague Water and Ultra Solar and Wind Solutions. We are an environmentally aware organization, and being surfers we are very aware of our environment and in keeping the beach and ocean clean. We thought it would be a great step in the right direction to operate the surf contests off the grid instead of using generators and having to plug into an electrical setup on the beach,” Hoffman said.
Hague Water will be providing the event with recyclable water bottles, while Ultra Solar and Wind Solutions will be bringing in solar power to operate the contest’s sound system and other devices.
The OCSC was formed to celebrate the local ocean community, its heritage and future. Firmly rooted in the rich surf history of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, the club supports area youth through scholarship and mentoring; always fostering respect for others, the ocean and fragile eco-system.
The events help fund the OCSC scholarship programs and environmental outreach and the club’s efforts to “not just make good surfers, make good people.”
“Our mission statement is to nurture and respect our environment, and to educate kids and adults alike in keeping our beaches and ocean clean. We give back by not just being good surfers but by being good people … we thought as a group we could come together and make a statement by having our event this weekend operate off the grid,” Hoffman said. “By making a statement on the beach and building awareness in going green by being environmentally conscious … we are all making a step in the right direction.”
For more information, visit www.oceancitysurfclub.org.