Reason to smile
Photos by Ricky Lesser
The horn had barely sounded the end of the finals heat of the Spyder/South Bay Boardriders contest last month at the Manhattan pier, when Waterman’s team captain Larry Burke and Dane McConahue hoisted Kelly Zaun to their shoulders and marched him up the beach for the celebratory Champaign shower.
“Not so quick. We haven’t tallied the results,” contest marshal Wright Adaza cautioned over the loudspeaker.
Zaun and his Waterman’s restaurant teammates weren’t worried. Zaun may not have won the contest. But he didn’t need to. The aspiring pro surfer only needed to beat recently retired pro Sean Burrell, and it was clear to everyone on the beach that he had, with a little help from his friends. The finals heat included teammates Matt Pagan and Kelly’s brother Dane. The goofy foot Pagan boxed Burrell out of the lefts, winning the contest in the process. Regular foot Dane camped out to the north of Burrell, picking off the rights.
Zaun ended up with third, behind Pagan and Spyder Surf’s Chris Broman, but well ahead of Burrell, who finished an uncharacteristic sixth.
Beating Burrell put Zaun ahead in points in the South Bay Boardriders Club six-contest series, earning him a trip for two toFiji aboard Air Pacific.
Zaun’s sponsor Quiksilver has sent him on surf trips all over the world, including Indonesia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Nicaragua, but never to Fiji.
A solid foundation
Zaun said he was too young to remember how old he was when his dad Todd began pushing him into waves at Rosecrans in El Porto on a 6-foot Bill Patterson surfboard they called “The Pill.”
His mother Laurie said she’d drop Kelly and his older brother and sister Dane and Brooke at Rosecrans and tell them to check in with lifeguard Terry Harvey, who manned the Rosecrans tower and became a close family friend.
Todd is a lifelong surfer, skier and golfer and played baseball through college. Kelly’s aunt Sherri coaches the USC women’s golf team and played on the LPGA.
Laurie also has a long, personal connection to surfing, though she doesn’t surf. She was Spyder Surf’s bookkeeper for 17 years, retiring last year.
The 19-year-old Zaun showed early promise as a surfer, but also excelled in soccer and baseball. He played pitcher, first baseman and catcher through pony league, until he was 14.
Though the family lives in Hawthorne, the Zauns enrolled their three athletic children in Manhattan Beach schools, in part because of the district’s surf programs. At Manhattan Beach Middle School they were coached by teacher and Los Angeles County Lifeguard Tracy Keller. Kelly was also coached by Keller at Mira Costa High when Keller became a teacher there.
Kelly Zaun feels his way along a Torrance tunnel. Photo by Ricky Meistrell.
Three mornings a week for over a decade, Todd Zaun drove first his daughter Brooke, then Dane and then Kelly to the Mira Costa High surf team practices at 26th Street in Manhattan Beach.
In 2009, the Costa surf team, with the two Zaun brothers, plus Dayton Silva and Brent Bowen, won the Red Bull National Surf League U.S. championships.
Following the victory a MTV reporter asked Kelly how the surf team was regarded on campus.
“We’re outcasts. Surfing’s not even recognized as a [CIF] sport,” Kelly answered.
But Zaun now sees a positive side to surfing’s outcast image. It brings surfers together.
“Surfing’s a sport, like any other sport. But it’s also a lifestyle,” he said. “People don’t walk around saying they are soccer players or a baseball players. But surfers identify themselves as surfers. We’re involved in it every day, if not surfing, working on boards and planning trips. I loved baseball, but you can’t play baseball your whole life, like you can surfing. Crews stick together through life. When you travel and meet other surfers, you usually hit it off with them.”
South Bay’s surf village
Despite surfing being an individual sport, Zaun credits his surfing success in large part to his surfing family, both immediate and extended.
His garage is filled with boards given to him and his brother by the world’s top shapers. But his favorite boards are shaped by fellow Mira Costa surf team alum John Mangiagli, who is following in the footsteps of his dad Steve, a co-founder of Becker Surfboards and owner of Mangiagli Surfboard Glassing in Hermosa Beach
Zaun’s surf photographer is Ricky Lesser, whose uncle is the president of Body Glove in Redondo Beach. Two weeks ago, the Zaun brothers and their dad went on a photo shoot with Lesser to the AST Surf Camp in Puerto Sandino, Nicaragua. Redondo Beach-based AST is co-owned by Dave Hall, whose son surfed for South High when the Zauns were at Mira Costa. Photos from the Nicaragua trip will be sold to the surf magazines to promote Kelly’s sponsor Quiksilver and Dane’s sponsor Hurley.
The day before leaving forNicaragua the two Zauns, Chris Bowman and Spyder co-owner Dickie O’Reilly competed for Spyder Surf in the Oakley Surf Shop Challenge Western Regional Championships at Huntington Beach. Last year the team won the contest, but this year lost to rival Jack’s Surf.
Zaun’s top finish in the Boardriders Club contest series not only validated his promise as a pro, but also the club’s goal of supporting upcoming young South Bay surfers.
“Every beach in Australia has a surf club with contests that everyone looks forward to. We didn’t have that until the Boardriders formed last year and worked its magic. I sat in on some of the early meetings and liked the fact that they were gearing it toward young kids,” Zaun said.
“During the grom heats at the last contest, I pushed in my friend David Slay’s younger brother, who skipped a soccer game to compete in the contest.
“Giving the groms a chance to compete, and for them to also see the older surfers compete will help them the way it helped me to surf with my dad and my older brother and sister.”
Laurie Zaun noted that having local contests is easier on families than having to travel up and down the state for NSSA contests, as her family did.
Except for a few contests organized by Body Glove’s Greg Browning, she recalled, there were no local contests when her kids were growing up to prepare them for NSSA contests. When Zaun was 11 and entered his first NSSA contest, on an 8-foot day at Huntington Beach, he wasn’t able to paddle out.
The Boardriders contests also have ratcheted up the level of local surfing, Zaun said, in part by attracting surfers from throughout Southern California, including Huntington,Venice and Santa Barbara.
“Last year there were some early heats I coasted through. But there were no easy heats this year,” Zaun said.
A measure of how the competition has improved was the fact that going into the last contest of the series,16th Street Hermosa Beach surfer Derek Brewer had what appeared to be an insurmountable series lead. All he needed to win the Fiji trip was to advance to the finals. He failed to make it out of his first heat.
Kelly Zaun plays Spiderman. Photo by Ricky Meistrell
Zaun still competes in NSSA contests, now as a member of the Mira Costa College surf team. His second place finish at the NSSA’s season ending college contest at Huntington Beach in January helped Mira Costa take third place in the 20-team league.
At the end of the month, he’ll represent Mira Costa College at the 2012 NSSA National Air Show Championships in Huntington Beach.
Burrell, who enrolled to school at San Diego State, following his pro career, won this year’s NSSA points title. Zaun’s former Mira Costa High teammate Dayton Silva finished fourth this year in NSSA points.
Kelly Zaun finds plenty to smile about. Photo by Ricky Meistrell
After Mira Costa College, Zaun plans to compete for the University of Southern California surf team, while obtaining a business degree.
“Then I’ll give the pro thing a go,” he said.
“I met Florida pro C.J. Hobgood in Hawaii and he told me don’t burn out at 18. Wait until you’re 23 or 24 to go pro, when you’re at your mental and physical peak. And get an education to fall back on.”
“It made sense,” Zaun said. ER