2026 Shore Sports Insider Baseball Coach of the Year: Angelo Fiore, Point Beach
For most of his 12-year tenure as Point Pleasant Beach’s head baseball coach, Angelo Fiore and his associate head coach Joe Mazza have been working to both lead Point Beach to an NJSIAA Group I championship while simultaneously shedding the Garnet Gulls’ reputation as a small school that only beats up on other small schools.
It has been a fine line to walk for Point Beach. The 2026 season afforded Fiore and his team an opportunity to reach every possible goal for a season, even if Fiore initially saw that opportunity as a burden.
The Garnet Gulls full advantage of their opportunity by outlasting a loaded field to win the Class A South division championship, then culminated their fifth straight 20-win season with their first-ever overall state championship. The sprint to the Group I title also landed Point Beach in the No. 1 ranking in the final Shore Sports Insider Top 10 and solidifies Fiore as the 2026 Shore Sports Insider Coach of the Year.
For the 2025 season, Point Beach moved out of the Shore Conference Class B Central and into the Class B South division in a move that raised the level of competition the Garnet Gulls would face. In an ironic twist, the same scheduling procedure that moved Point Beach out of the “small-school” division in 2025 – a move Fiore had advocated – also moved it to one of the state’s more unforgiving divisions for 2026: Class A South.
“I was not happy about moving up to the A South,” Fiore said. “I felt like we were getting thrown into a stereotype, because we take tuition students.”
Point Beach’s move into A South was based on mathematics rather than the narrative Fiore evokes, and the only stereotype that mattered in determining Point Beach’s division home was that the Garnet Gulls have been one of the Shore’s top earners in NJSIAA power points over the past four years. Since the 2024-25 school year, the power point total over the past two seasons is the measurement by which teams are organised by division in Shore Conference baseball.
Moving to the Class A South division could have exposed Point Beach. Instead, it powered them to the best season the Garnet Gulls have ever had.
Two years after getting blown out in the program’s first-ever Group I championship game appearance, Point Beach returned to the championship game and completed a dominant run to its first-ever Group I title by outscoring its six opponents by a combined score of 69-14.
Point Beach celebrates its NJSIAA Group I championship. (Photo: Tom Smith | tspsportsimages.com)
In the grand scheme of things, that was not even Point Beach’s greatest achievement in 2026. Joining the Class A South division would have been an unthinkable undertaking for the Garnet Gulls several seasons ago, but the change in the division structure of the Shore Conference, plus Point Beach’s success over the past four years, provided the perfect set of conditions to land a Group I school in a division that has traditionally been reserved for the biggest, best programs in Ocean County.
Not only did Point Beach hold its own in divisional play, but it also beat out the likes of Brick Memorial, Wall, Toms River East, and Jackson to win the division championship.
By winning the A South division and then winning an overall state championship, Point Beach reached the status that Fiore and Mazza envisioned when few others around the conference or the state would have given the Garnet Gulls any chance to challenge for a No. 1 ranking in the Shore Conference and a top 20 ranking in the state.
“In hindsight, it was a blessing of what it forced us to prepare for,” Fiore said of the move to Class A South. “We always preach this game is 95 percent preparation and five percent execution, and playing that competition definitely made us better players.”
Point Beach coach Angelo Fiore speaks with an umpire during his team’s home game vs. Wall. (Photo: Patrick Olivero)
The 2026 Point Beach season has been several years in the making, especially considering that most of its starters have started since the 2024 season, when the Garnet Gulls finished runner-up to Pompton Lakes in the Group I Tournament. Seniors Dan Lubach and Tommy Conroy started since their freshman seasons in 2022, and senior shortstop Antonio Acevedo has started since transferring from Brick Township as a sophomore ahead of the 2024 season. Senior first baseman Dylan Ryan has also been a starter since his sophomore year, while junior outfielder Brody Powers and junior third baseman Carson Pfeifer also started as freshmen two years ago.
By the end of the season, the three other starters were underclassmen: freshman second baseman Mason Sesny and sophomore outfielders Thomas Slobiski and Davin Marquez. Point Beach has achieved its recent success with significant contributions coming from its underclassmen, but reached its new level in 2026 with more senior impact than Fiore has had at any point in his 12 seasons.
Lubach and Conroy, in particular, have been central to Point Beach’s success over the past four years, which includes three Central Jersey Group I sectional championships and three straight Shore Conference division titles in three different divisions to go along with the Group I championship.
“They are like having coaches out there,” Fiore said of Conroy and Lubach. “There are times we yell at each other, because of the relationship you have built up over four years. There was one point Tommy Conroy and I didn’t speak for three games. He saw it one way, I saw it another, but at the end of the day, I respect him as a player and as a person. He is seeing something different than I’m seeing it, and I respect his game.”
Point Beach coach Angelo Fiore congratulates senior Tommy Conroy after Conroy’s home run vs. Shore in the 2026 NJSIAA Central Jersey Group I championship game. (Photo: Tom Smith | tspsportsimages.com)
That Conroy, Lubach, Acevedo, Slobiski, and Sesny arrived at Point Beach is both the source of the “stereotype” to which Fiore aluded as well as a testament to the change in stature for Point Beach Baseball. Conroy is from Bayville, and all four of Lubach, Acevedo, Slobiski, and Sesny are from Brick, which is five players in the lineup and three-quarters of Point Beach’s 2026 pitching staff.
Under Fiore, Point Beach has become an attractive option for out-of-district students whose families are willing to pay tuition – a luxury not afforded to every coach at every school. With a mix of players from multiple towns, Point Beach has raised its collection of talent beyond that of most Group I schools. Fiore and Mazza have coached that talent to play as a team and compete far beyond its Group I status.
“I think this is a validation of our program,” Fiore said. “That we are not a little program that is just getting lucky every now and then. It used to be that we would play in our old division (Class B Central), and we would have to pick up a game to prove a point. This was such an exceptional year, and it was cemented in a championship game that showed the players we have are about as legit as anybody else. They are some of the best players in the Shore Conference and the state.”
Matt Manley’s Coach of the Year Ballot
1. Angelo Fiore, Point Beach
2. Marty Kenney Jr., Christian Brothers Academy
3. Evan Rizzitello, Brick Memorial
4. Jay Kuhlthau, Shore
5. Miguel Arroyo, Howell
6. Jim Rankin, Toms River South
7. Pat Geroni, Ranney
8. Owen Stewart, Rumson-Fair Haven
9. Mike Yorke, Colts Neck
10. Todd Smith, Freehold Township
