In their 60^th year, Merewether had targetted the prestigious event, which they also took out in 2014 to cap their 50^th anniversary celebrations.

The club's line-up had won six of their seven individual heats but still needed Ryssenbeek to defeat North Narrabeen's Dylan Moffat to seal overall victory on the pointscore.

Ryssenbeek trailed Moffat and needed a 6.01 to take top spot in the four-man heat when he caught a wave at the death. It came back as a 6.07 to give him a 11.74 to 11.67 win on best two-wave totals.

It put Merewether ahead 31 to 29 over North Narrabeen to take the 40^th edition of the Kirra Teams Challenge, which the club also won in 1986 and '87.

"We won it in our 50^th year and I said to everyone at the start of this year that if there's one thing I want to do this year, it's win the Kirra Teams in our 60^th," Merewether club president Cal Horton said.

"It's a young squad, so it's really good. The average age of the team was 19, and that was just the decision we made. We could have approached it in different ways but we said we'll back the young boys, and they smashed it."

Ryssenbeek's heroics came after fellow open competitors Morgan Cibilic (12.57), Josh Levey (12.03), Mikey Clayton-Brown (17.1) and Eden Hasson (14.5), and juniors Manning Gregory (11.93) and Ocean Lancaster (16.6) won their heats.

Open surfer Walter Hiatt was the only Merewether member not to win. He placed second to Kawanna's Dane Bird 12.57 to 10.9 in a thriller.

"It's an insane effort," Horton said.

"And if we'd had another 15 seconds in the other heat ... he got the wave but it was just after the hooter went. He smashed it all the way to shore and it would have been eight firsts, which has never been done."