Head of the Class: Point Beach Baseball Wins First Class A South Title

POINT PLEASANT BEACH — When Angelo Fiore and Joe Mazza took over the Point Pleasant Beach baseball program ahead of the 2015 season, one of their goals was to build up their NJSIAA Group I program enough to compete with any Shore Conference Class A South division team.

Little did the two Garnet Gulls coaches know they would not only compete with Class A South teams; they would become one. And not only did Point Beach become a Class A South team; in their first year in the division of Ocean County giants, the Group I Garnet Gulls ruled them all.

Senior right-hander Bennett Moberg pitched a three-hit complete-game and senior Antonio Acevedo and sophomore Thomas Slobiski each drove in two runs Friday to lead Point Beach — the No. 6 team in the Shore Sports Insider Top 10 — to a 4-1, win over No. 9 Wall in a winner-take-all division game that clinched Point Beach the outright Class A South division championship.

“We’re not just some tiny school that is the B Central school,” Moberg said. “We’re now the A South team.”

“Winning in A South is so prestigious,” Fiore said. “What these teams have accomplished and both recently and throughout their history and then to be able to come out of this division on top is insane. It’s mind-boggling.”

The division title is the fourth straight for Point Beach, the last three of which were outright championships in three different divisions. In 2023, Point Beach shared the Class B Central championship with St. Rose, then beat the Purple Roses for the 2024 B Central title — the first ever outright division championship for the program.

After winning three straight NJSIAA Central Jersey Group I championships and reaching the Group I final for the first time in program history in 2024, Point Beach moved into a more competitive Class B South division in 2025 and won that outright as well. The success produced enough power points over the past two seasons to slot Point Beach in Class A South, making the Garnet Gulls the first Group I team to ever play in a Class A division in baseball and the first Point Beach team in any sport to play in a Class A South division.

“I thought we were going to be here from day one,” Point Beach senior catcher Dan Lubach said. “It’s awesome, because you hear from people all year, ‘You guys are playing nobody. Yeah, you won in Group One. Cool, whatever.’ But we played Group Three, Group Two, Group Four schools in this division and we proved we’re the team this year. It was a lot of work by our coaches and our players. It’s a very special moment.”

Point Beach’s A South experience in 2026 got off to a rocky start, with the Garnet Gulls losing two games to Toms River East after opening the season with two wins over Southern Regional. Since being swept by Toms River East, however, Point Beach has gone 5-1 in division play to win the regular-season championship with a 7-3 record. That 5-1 close to the division slate included a sweep of defending division and Shore Conference Tournament champion Brick Memorial, plus the sweep of Wall the Garnet Gulls completed on Friday.

“Every day we wake up, we are playing a top ten team (in the Shore),” Fiore said. “It’s unprecedented. We have never been through this and the mere fact that we were able to get through this 7-3 and the A South champs, I think this was more testament to the excellence of this team than it was when we won our sectional championship.”

Like Point Beach’s season, Friday’s game did not run smoothly for the Gulls at first, but they settled in and took control during the middle innings. Moberg surrendered an unearned run in the top of the second inning, set up by a two-out double to deep rightfield by Wall designated hitter Christian Suarez, who then scored on a two-out throwing error. The Crimson Knights would load the bases after scoring the run, but Moberg induced an inning-ending fly out to keep the deficit at 1-0.

“It means my coaches trust me and that means more than anything I could ask for,” Moberg said of getting the start on Friday. “They allowed me to pitch, probably, my best game I have ever pitched and to represent Point Beach in the way that I want to.”

“Playing in B Central, you can go 13-1 or 14-2 or whatever and you hardly know what it’s like to lose,” Fiore said. “In A South, you’re losing a 10-inning game and mentally, that just crushes you, so you have to be able to come back from a Toms River East loss. The mental toughness on that was so demanding. That’s thing I wasn’t sure we could handle.”

Wall senior left-hander Nick Plevier silenced Point Beach over the first three innings before Lubach once again started a momentum-changing rally vs. the Crimson Knights southpaw. In a 4-1 win over Wall on April 22, Lubach hit a game-tying solo home run off Plevier to break up a shutout in the sixth inning and on Friday, he started the go-ahead rally in more modest fashion — by drawing a six-pitch walk with one out in the bottom of the fourth.

“If you look at the box scores, we have been down in almost every game,” Lubach said. “We come back. We fight and fight and fight until we have the lead. We have been pretty shut-down once we get the lead back. Our guys keep up the energy throughout the game and I think that’s something we can hopefully keep up throughout the Shore Conference and State Tournament.”

Plevier then walked junior rightfielder Brody Powers and hit junior third baseman Carson Pfeifer to load the bases with one out. Acevedo then lifted a deep fly ball to leftfield that bounced up against the fence, scoring the runners from second and third. Powers misjudged the ball and stopped at second, forcing Acevedo to settle for a two-run single.

Thomas Slobiski adds on for Pt Beach with an RBI single and the Gulls now lead 3-1. pic.twitter.com/AfMoWM0iXg

— Matt Manley (@Matt_Manley) May 1, 2026

Slobiski followed with an RBI single through the right side for a 3-1 Point Beach lead and later added a sacrifice fly in the sixth to score Pfeifer, who singled and moved to second on an error before a ground ball to the right side got him to third base for Slobiski to drive in.

“We have had a bunch of guys step up,” Lubach said. “Thomas Slobiski, we didn’t think he was going to hit this year. He is one of our better pitchers, but he has just been mashing, so he has been huge for us.”

Point Beach takes the lead on a long single by Antonio Acevedo that plates 2 in the bottom of the 4th. 2-1 Beach. pic.twitter.com/0xYLu9zE98

— Matt Manley (@Matt_Manley) May 1, 2026

Moberg, meanwhile, settled in after a taxing first three innings. Through three frames, Moberg had thrown 59 pitches with three walks. Over the final four innings, the senior needed only 41 pitches and walked just one in finishing off his first ever seven-inning complete game.

“I started involving my two-seamer,” Moberg said. “Today, it was definitely my best pitch. It’s been a very consistent dropping pitch that hitters just can’t seam to barrel. They ground out or pop-up which is what I got a lot of today.”

“His four-seam mixed with the two seam kept everyone off-balance,” Lubach said of Moberg. “His four-seem is a little bit slower than his two-seam, so he is getting kids out in front and then throwing the two-seam and it was just disappearing on them.”

In the 4-1 Point Beach win on April 22, Tommy Conroy pitched a nine-inning complete game and was eligible to pitch on Friday, but Fiore and Mazza went with Moberg to give Wall a different look to start the game.

“We had Conroy and Acevedo ready today; we just wanted to give them a different look,” Fiore said. “Moberg took a little while to get going, but once he locked in, that was an excellent performance. He has always been that kid that as the weather heats up, he gets better and better.”

“Tommy went through that lineup four, even five times the last time and we didn’t really want to have to go to him again unless we had to,” Lubach said. “They haven’t seen Bennett – a lot of teams haven’t seen Bennett. That was Bennett.

“He (Moberg) has been struggling a little bit lately, but it’s a huge game for him to come out and shove. We all have the confidence in him to come out and shove. He came out and did what he does. That was him. That was last year’s Bennett Moberg and he’s back.”

Neither Point Beach nor Wall are traditional Class A South teams, which consist of the largest Ocean County schools: the three Toms River public schools, Brick Memorial, Southern Regional, Jackson and Brick, with Lacey and Central also spending some years among the A South field. Wall has won division championships in Class B North and Class A Central while playing against Monmouth County teams in the Group II and III classifications, but Point Beach has only recently become a regular at the top of any division standings.

When the Garnet Gulls first started winning a share of the division championship in the last decade-and-a-half, they were doing so in Class B Central before going on to compete in the Central Jersey Group I playoffs, in which they did not win a championship until 2022. In four years, Point Beach has gone from a team that can compete near the top of Group I and Class B Central, but without a track record of playing with the Shore’s top teams on a consistent basis.

“In the states, we go in every year as a high seed and most years, the first one or two games you’re just coasting along,” Mazza said. “We didn’t get to coast this year. Every day, it’s a top ten team and it’s a grind.”

They began to peck away at that reputation in 2023 and 2024, then won the Class B South championship last season. By winning Class A South this season over the likes of Brick Memorial, Toms River East, Wall, Jackson and Southern, the Garnet Gulls officially announced their arrival as one of the top programs in the conference, regardless of school size.

Final: Point Beach 4, Wall 1. Bennett Moberg throws a 3-hitter and Point Beach win the Class A South championship. pic.twitter.com/4gxoTNt7y4

— Matt Manley (@Matt_Manley) May 1, 2026

Lubach’s emergence as a First-Team All-Shore catcher as a sophomore was an early signal that Point Beach was progressing to the point that it could more than hold its own in a division like Class A South.

“It’s awesome, because it’s not the kind of schedule where you come out and go four-for-four and it’s easy,” Lubach said. “It’s one big at-bat that changes the game and it’s someone new that’s coming through every day.

“It’s not come out and score 15 runs on 20 hits and win in four (innings) anymore. Every game is a battle and you have to play for seven, sometimes 10 innings. We’re playing hard and doing what we have to do to get wins.”

While Point Beach survived the Class A South gauntlet as champion, it bit the Garnet Gulls in the Ocean County Tournament when Southern knocked off the Garnet Gulls Tuesday in the OCT quarterfinals. Next week, Point Beach will play a pair of Shore-ranked opponents in No. 3 Ranney and No. 8 Howell before a May 9 clash with Point Pleasant Boro. After that, the Garnet Gulls and 23 other Shore Conference teams will turn their attention to the Shore Conference Tournament.

Winning the SCT does not sound like such a far-fetched goal for Point Beach now that the Garnet Gulls have conquered Class A South, but ultimate goal lies beyond the SCT: the Group I championship game at Rutgers University on June 14.

“I don’t think there is anything this team can’t do,” Lubach said. “Obviously, (losing to) Middlesex was a tough one last year, but we’re not thinking about that. I want the real thing this year. I want to be up at Rutgers.”