‘We Had A Great Comeback’: Days After Tornado, Sun And Surf Beach Club Softball Team Brings Home Title

ATLANTIC BEACH, NY — For the past five summers, the eight-team beach club softball league in Atlantic Beach has been holding a seven-week round robin season and crowning a champion at the end of the summer.

“It has always been softball down at the beach club,” team organizer Rick Cusamano said.

On Aug. 30, Cusamano’s team, made up of members from Sun and Surf Beach Club, brought home their third championship in four years.

Despite getting used to winning trophies in recent years, this season was a little bit different: On Thursday, Aug. 20, just as playoffs were about to get underway, a tornado touched down in Atlantic Beach and tore through Sun and Surf.

To the National Weather Service, the tornado was classified as an EF-1, with winds peaking at 97 miles per hour as the storm cut a 100-yard long, .36-mile wide path across the sand.

To Sun and Surf members, the storm tore through a beach club that they love. The trail of demolished cabanas and lockers torn asunder were more than just wreckage: They were what was left of a place where families had made memories, summer after summer, and become part of a community.

“I would say the community at Sun and Surf is very much a family. We may only see some of these folks for the 10 weeks or so that we are down there, but those are some of the strongest relationships that I have with people,” Sun and Surf member Zach Guerreiro said. “We are spending an exorbitant amount of time with them and with their kids. So our kids become friends with their kids, we become extended parents or uncles to some of these kids. And we build these incredibly deep bonds over the memories that we're building with our families.”

Guerreiro is also the catcher on the title-winning softball team, and was at Sun and Surf with his family the day the tornado hit.

Guerreiro's wife was at a formal charity lunch that day, while their three children — aged 12, 10 and 6 — were at the beach. At about 4 p.m., Guerreiro said he left a day of remote work at home to go spend time with the family.

“It was around 6:30 when I said to my wife, ‘Hey, honey, I'm going to go close up the cabana and I'll come back here and meet with you.’ I went and closed the cabana and came back, and that's when the tornado hit, which was right around like 6:40, 6:45,” Guerreiro said. “My two younger kids were with my wife. They had made their way down to the clubhouse. My older son was with a group of kids dropping something off at another family's locker. And the lockers is where the tornado actually touched down. And so thankfully they got themselves into a locker. They were able to, you know, protect themselves from the strength of while the storm then came through. And it was there and then gone within 30 seconds.”

As the family drove home from Sun and Surf, Guerreiro said they saw a procession of emergency vehicles and first responders rushing in the direction of the club.

“It was a scary moment when it touched down because you had the damage, you had this unprecedented weather event from Long Island,” Guerreiro said. “I think everyone, when we left the club, we thought, ‘well, that's a crazy end of the season.’”

In this case, it was not the softball season that Guerreiro thought would be on hold, but the beach club’s entire season.

“I don't think any of us thought that we would be able to get back on the field. It's an incredible credit to the club, [to] their ability to clean it up, to be resilient and not have a storm completely break them,” Guerreiro said. “They could have easily said, ‘We’re packing in the season.’ Not just the softball season, they could have told members, ‘We're going to close things down. We want people to come and get their stuff and we're not going to continue to operate as a business.’”

Nine days later, on Aug. 29, Sun and Surf partially reopened. The softball season, Guerreiro and Cusamano would find out, was back on.

“The men and women that work there did an incredible job to make it look like nothing had even happened,” Guerreiro said. “The field looked pristine, the flags were all in place, and it felt like we were transported back to a time before the tornado and the storm even happened.”

In a conversation with Patch Friday, Cusamano described the return to the beach club softball field as “eerie.”

“Just to be out there knowing that, I think, the first week of the playoffs, we weren't even allowed at the beach club, still. We were using the Silver Point Beach Club, and it was a little weird, that we were out there playing softball, and things are coming back together, and a lot of people lost their cabanas and lockers,” Cusamano said. “But, Sun and Surf came true, and got us back out there, so that was the feel good story: knowing that they let us back in the beach club. They put things together fast and got us back on the field.”

As for the title game itself, Cusamano said his team was chasing a perfect 10-0 season in that game. They fell behind after a tough couple of opening frames against the "J Court Jabronis," and trailed 3-0.

Going into the bottom of the sixth inning, Sun and Surf trailed 4-1. Then came key hits from Pat McCaffrey, Fred Edwards, Nelson Barriocanal, Brian O'Neill and Jim O'Shea, and the rally was on. With the game, the title and a perfect season there for the taking, a familiar face came to the plate to deliver a go-ahead hit: Zach Guerreiro.

Sun and Surf took its first lead of the game off of Guerreiro's bat, and would add an insurance run to take the score to 6-4.

In the seventh and final inning, Sun and Surf wasn't out of the woods just yet: Alex Diorio would clinch the perfect season with a diving catch, and hats flew as the team celebrated its championship win.

“It was incredible. We had all of our family there, all three of my kids were there to watch us do it,” Guerreiro said of the championship win. “And to be able to do it with this group of guys, we've stayed together from the start, it was really special. And, when I think about the game itself, to be down, to claw your way back after having some tough innings in the beginning of the game, it really meant even more.”

“It was one of the best seasons ever,” Cusamano said. “We can't do any better. It was 10-0. Perfect season.”

For league organizer Colin Maier, the crowning of a champion and the drive to win is only part of the fun that beach club members get from playing softball by the water.

“It’s more about enjoying each other’s company and having fun,” maker said. “We just try to make it a lot of fun, you know?”

Refecting on the title game, however, Cusamano put it simply.

“We had a great comeback.”

As the softball team from Sun and Surf celebrated their comeback win Saturday, the club they were representing continued a comeback of its own. According to the club’s Facebook page, Sun and Surf will be open all three days over Labor Day Weekend. The cafeteria will open at 10 a.m. every day, and the bar at noon, with the Osprey deck following at 4 p.m.

The areas most severely damaged by the tornado remain closed, the club said, and some of the cleanup efforts in those areas have come under state supervision.

While the state has stepped in to oversee some of the cleanup at Sun and Surf, there has also been some local aid coming in. In statements on social media, Sun and Surf management have thanked Frankie’s Trattoria, Villa Mare Restaurant, Friendlier of Woodmere and West End Pizza & Restaurant for delivering lunches to the club’s cleanup crew. Also receiving thanks was Fox Business journalist Liz MacDonald, who Sun and Surf management said had provided a full week’s worth of lunch for the cleanup team.

When the beach club does open up for its Labor Day Weekend festivities, at least one family has confirmed that they will be in attendance.

“We're going to be there this weekend,” Guerreiro said.