Body Glove team rider Matt Mohagen went to Hawaii early this year so he could be home in time for the South Bay Big Wave Challenge.
“I wanted the prize money,” the 22-year-old Culver City resident said last week, shortly before learning he had won the contest.
The South Bay Boardriders Club, which organized the contest, promised $2,000 to the winner and Body Glove wetsuits to the five finalists. The contest area was Palos Verdes on the south and El Segundo on the north. It began December 1 and closed March 31.
“The only wave I checked was Hammerland because I know it can handle a big, thick, heavy wave,” Mohagen said.
After checking the break on January 19, Mohagen thought this might be the day and called friend and videographer Jeff Farsai. Then he paddled out to join half a dozen other Hammerland regulars, including Tyler Hatzikian, Kenny Brechtelsbauer, Eddie Lester, Scott Daily and his brother Chris.
Generally, the crowd surfing the lefts sit in front of, or north of the El Segundo jetty. But on this day, the lefts were peaking south of the jetty.
“I saw the wave a minute before it hit. I told Kenny 10 times, ‘I’m going, I’m going.’ There were guys sitting further out, and I could have been deeper, but I didn’t know where it would break and all I had in my car that day was my 6-0 board. So, I just put my head down and went for it,” Mohagen said.
“Eddie Lester caught the wave before and it let him in pretty easily,” he said, omitting the fact that Lester was on a longer board.
Farsai was in the water, videoing with his Canon 7D. Halfway down the face of the pitching, triple overhead wave, Mohagen appears to catch his inside rail and almost falls. He recovers just in time to crank a hard, bottom turn, with the help of his left hand buried in the face of the wave. He grazes over the boils that mark the rocks at the end of the jetty.
“This was one of the most intense drops I’ve ever had in California. The minute I hit the boils it got pretty crazy,” Mohagen said.
The four other Big Wave Challenge finalists were Derek Levy, Chris Rodriquez and Marcello Malinco — photographed at the Redondo Breakwall; and Hatzikian photographed at Hammerland the day after Mohegen’s big wave.
Any doubt about who deserved the win was settled by the roar that greeted the screening of Farsai’s video of Mohagen Friday night during the awards ceremony at the Hermosa Beach Community Center.
Body Glove videographers John DeTemple and Greg Browning edited a video that included Farsai’s video of Mohagen, as well as photographers Brad Jacobson’s, Tim Tidall’s, and John Miller’s stills of the other finalists, along with interviews of the finalists describing their waves.
The contest video was the highlight of the evening, which included a performance, by pro surfer turned musician Donovan Frankenreiter, and a screening of Australian surfer Wade Goodall’s “Creative Destruction.”
The Hermosa Beach Historical Society and the South Bay Boardriders Club organized the sold-out evening.
Check out the Big Wave Challenge awards photo gallery.
