{"id":7179,"date":"2021-12-02T02:55:45","date_gmt":"2021-12-02T07:55:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/?p=7179"},"modified":"2021-12-02T02:55:45","modified_gmt":"2021-12-02T07:55:45","slug":"polar-plunge-will-return-to-seaside-heights-in-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/2021\/12\/polar-plunge-will-return-to-seaside-heights-in-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Polar Plunge&#8217; Will Return to Seaside Heights in 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_6298\" style=\"width: 1010px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lavallette-seaside.shorebeat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/seaside_heights_polar_plunge_2019_111.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6298\" class=\"size-large wp-image-6298\" src=\"https:\/\/lavallette-seaside.shorebeat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/seaside_heights_polar_plunge_2019_111-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"Participants in the 2019 Seaside Heights Polar Plunge. (Photo: Daniel Nee)\" width=\"1000\" height=\"667\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-6298\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Participants in the 2019 Seaside Heights Polar Plunge. (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The annual Seaside Heights Polar Plunge, an annual tradition that raises millions of dollars for Special Olympics New Jersey, will return to town after being canceled and moved to a virtual platform last year due to the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>Seaside Heights officials received a request from the organizers of the event to hold the plunge just before gathering for a borough council meeting Wednesday. Mayor Anthony Vaz said Special Olympics New Jersey requested to hold the event on the borough\u2019s oceanfront Feb. 26, 2022.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019re back!\u201d an excited Vaz said. \u201cWe\u2019re happy to have them, and hopefully the pandemic will not interrupt things again this year.\u201d<\/p>\n[videopress nsmcMFDk]\n<p>The most recent plunge event, held in 2020 just before the pandemic arrived in the United States, raised $2.5 million, beating a previous record of $2.3 million raised in 2019. The Polar Plunge is also a major economic factor for boardwalk businesses, with just under 10,000 participants flocking to the boardwalk along with several times as many spectators looking on. Though solidly a \u201cwinter\u201d institution, the plunge kicks off a number of important pre-season events in town, including the St. Patrick\u2019s Day Parade and Easter celebrations in the following months.<\/p>\n<p>Registration and donation opportunities are already open at the plunge website, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.plungeseaside.org\/\">www.plungeseaside.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fcbkbttn_buttons_block\" id=\"fcbkbttn_left\"><div class=\"fb-share-button fcbkbttn_large_button \" data-href=\"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/2021\/12\/polar-plunge-will-return-to-seaside-heights-in-2022\/\" data-type=\"button_count\" data-size=\"large\"><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The annual Seaside Heights Polar Plunge, an annual tradition that raises millions of dollars for Special Olympics New Jersey, will return to town after being canceled and moved to a virtual platform last year due to the coronavirus pandemic. Seaside Heights officials received a request from the organizers of the event to hold the plunge [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[228,11],"class_list":["post-7179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ocean-county-news","tag-polar-plunge","tag-toms-river-nj-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/seaside_heights_polar_plunge_2019_111-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}