Toms River East Heads West

Every once in a while I get to mention something that is just plain cool and exciting and this falls into that category:

For the second straight year Toms River High School East is heading to California to compete in the Hurley Walk the Walk National Championship, the world’s largest high school fashion competition. It will take place next Thursday in Huntington Beach at the U.S. Open of Surfing with Toms River East to battle Kellam of Virginia Beach, Grossmont of San Diego, Peterborough from Ontario, Canada and defending champion Corona del Mar of Southern California in the finals with the winner to bring home $25,000 to their school.

Toms River East qualified for the finals based on their performance during the preliminary round where competing schools created and submitted online videos that were judged by Hurley executives and voted upon online. For the last two months 20 students and 5 teachers have been creating a 5-minute runway performance complete with musical soundtrack, choreography, props and fashion design which will be featured during the event next week. In doing some research on the event I have seen a few comments describing it as “Friday Night Lights” meets “Project Runway” and some 10,000 people are expected to witness the finals. Hurley, which is a youth lifestyle brand connected with surfing, skate and music pays all major expenses including airfare, hotel accommodations and even some meals. Assistant Principal Pat Thomas, 5 teachers, including Diane Morrissey and 20 students will leave next Tuesday for a “once in a lifetime experiences” that’s actually happening for the second straight year.

For those of you in the Toms River area that get TV21, the channel will stream footage of the Walk the Walk finals live on Thursday, August 4th beginning at 7pm our time and it can also be viewed at www.hurley.com/wtw. Once the competition is over you can vote for Toms River East on that site. Here’s wishing the students all the best as what they’ve done is truly worth recognizing.

On an unrelated note the new football coach at Lakewood High School is a former Piner who has spent the last six years as an assistant. L.J. Clark succeeds Warren Wolf who retired last month after serving as Lakewood coach for one season following 51 years at Brick.