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There's no ocean in Lodi, New Jersey — but that doesn't stop the surfers
By
Brian Donohue
Published Feb 3, 2025
Modified Feb 5, 2025
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Brian Donohue for Gothamist
By
Brian Donohue
Published Feb 3, 2025
Modified Feb 5, 2025
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You’ve probably heard of the Jamaican bobsled team or the Kenyan ice hockey team, which are both widely celebrated for dedication in environments where no one expects to find anyone playing their sports.
New Jersey has its own group of athletes who could vie for the gold medal in geographic incongruity: the teens of the Lodi High School Surfing Club.
Lodi, in Bergen County, is an essentially landlocked borough divided by Routes 46 and 80. It's a bit urban and a tad suburban, and its only body of water is the Saddle River, which was once lined with chemical factories that were the scene of several horrific explosions in the last century. The nearest beach is an hour away, if you’re really lucky with the traffic.
“Never in a million years would I ever think I would have touched a surfboard,” said Benita Osmani, who graduated last year but still joins the club on outings. “But here I am. I love it. It brings so much joy to me.”
But Osmani, who was soaked and carrying a surfboard under her arm, wasn’t on a beach as she spoke. She was standing inside a mall.
The team holds regular wave-riding sessions in the country's largest indoor surfing wave pool at the Dreamworks Water Park inside the American Dream mall and entertainment complex in East Rutherford.
“The wave is artificial but the stoke is 100% real,” said art teacher and surfing coach Matt Nicolosi, who founded the club three years ago.
As club members arrived and gathered at the mall escalator for their first outing of the year on a recent Wednesday night, Nicolosi was chatting with a parent about how much time kids spend online.
“I tell kids, ‘Stop watching other people live,’”’ he said. “Go live!”
After a walk through the massive mall and a short lesson for the newbies, 24 members of the club rode wave after wave amid nonstop hoots and cheers.
Some cruised down the line with aplomb. Others wiped out on every wave. The cavernous glass ceiling above framed the black night sky and giant statues of Shrek and Kung Fu Panda loomed over the action.
Sebastian Barcia, a sophomore whose family moved from Brooklyn to Lodi before he started high school, said he was undaunted after failing to stand up on his first outing with the club.
“I was terrible at it, but it doesn’t really matter because of how fun the wave pool is,” he said.
The teens of the Lodi High School surf club come to the American Dream mall's wave pool three times a year.
Brian Donohue for Gothamist
Nicolosi is a longtime surfer who works part time as an instructor at Skudin Surf. The company gives lessons and books group surfing sessions in the off hours, when the water park at American Dream is closed to the public, and the wave machine can be dialed up to shredding heights.
Watching high school surfing teams become more established in places like the Jersey Shore and in Long Beach, New York, he realized the pool might give his students a chance to experience his lifelong passion.
“It’s a spiritual thing for me, too, and to be able to pass that along or to share that with them is amazing,’ Nicolosi said. “They’re part of the tribe now. It doesn’t matter where they’re from."
Nicolosi is hoping more north Jersey schools might follow Lodi’s lead.
“There’s a saying, “Only a surfer knows the feeling’ — now they know that feeling. And it’s a special thing,” he said. “And the fact that it’s here, in New Jersey in a wave pool next to the turnpike, blows my mind.”
In between three surf sessions per year, the club meets for training, fundraisers and to watch surf videos. Nicolosi said that while he was unsure if anyone would sign up for the club when it formed three years ago, he's now "afraid I might have to turn kids away” to keep the sessions at a manageable size.
Melanie Mejia, who has used a wheelchair since age 8, says she experiences freedom when out on the waves.
Brian Donohue for Gothamist
During the most recent visit, sophomore Melanie Mejia was the first teen to paddle out to the deep end of the pool, where the waves break.
In the shallows, she left behind the wheelchair that she has used since she was 8, when an autoimmune disorder left her paralyzed from the waist down. She spent an hour riding dozens of waves on her stomach, swimming back to her board on her own after wipeouts.
“Being in the water I feel so much more free, than being in the wheelchair being trapped inside,” she said.
So far, the two dozen club members remain mostly beginners. None have ventured beyond the wave pool to surf in the ocean.
But Julianna Cruz, another alum returning for a surf session, said the club lessons have her looking toward that horizon. A nursing student at Penn State University, she knows her future career can come with a wide choice of places to live and work.
Now, access to surfing waves just might be a factor in her decisions.
“I heard about this travel program. It went to St. Thomas,’’ she said. “Imagine: A nurse surfing in St. Thomas.”
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Brian Donohue
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