Tuesday This & That

Toms River East is one of 30 schools from 25 cities nationwide picked to compete in this year’s Hurley Walk the Walk National Championships.

Hurley is a California-based clothing company that puts emphasis on surfing, skateboarding and music and obviously popular among young people. The competition involves schools submitting 3 on-line videos in which students demonstrate their expertise in design, marketing and production. Toms River East students will also be involved in choreographing a stage show and creating a storefront at Pac Sun in the Ocean County Mall. From on-line voting the 30 schools will be narrowed down to five finalists who will be flown out to the National Championship runway show at the US Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach, California where $25,000 goes to the winner.

The first of the three videos presentations was titled “Show Your DNA”
and was designed for schools to show what’s unique about their school and area and on line voting ends today. I’ve seen the one submitted by High School East students and it is really well done and right now they are in first place among schools from the East bracket. To view it and vote simply go to Hurley.com and click “Walk the Walk” and follow along. Good luck to “Raider Nation”

Do you remember Andrew Valmon? He was a track star at Manchester Township High School who won a gold medal as part of the United States
4 x 400 relay team at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. The 45-year old Valmon is in his 7th season as the head track and field coach at the University of Maryland and before that coached at Georgetown. Recently he was named head coach of the US men’s team for the World Indoor Track & Field Championships later this month. Valmon is married to former Olympic runner Meredith Rainey and they have three children. He was one of my favorites as a young athlete and I’m very happy for his success.