South Bay Surf Club contests go high tech
Alex Fry earns the admiration of a fellow competitor Shane Fortino during a South Bay Boardriders contest last winter. Photo by Steve Gaffney
by Wright Adaza
A bunch of clipboards were lined up on tables at the first South Bay Boardriders Club meeting on November 9, 2009. One was for the fundraising committee, another for the membership committee. I just didn’t feel I could offer much assistance. Then I came across a clipboard that read Surf Series committee. I signed my name, having no idea what I had actually signed up for.
Turns out the first SBBC Surf Committee meeting was held at my house. About 20 folks showed up. I believe Shaun Burrell and Matt Walls led the meeting. There were so many ideas about what divisions we should have that it was obvious we would not be able to come to a consensus. We had too watermen from different sports trying to reach agreement.
Burrell, Walls and Mark Levy stayed after the majority of the group had finished their pizza and beer and gone home. It was then we decided the best way to move forward was to keep the committee small.
The original Surf Series Committee was Mike Balzer, Matt Walls, Shaun Burrell, Charlie Carver, Mark Theodore, Doug Sommers and Wright Adaza.
We met at Walls’s house to lay out the vision that would become the SBBC Surf Series. We started with a member contest in El Porto. I remember a lot of fog, a cell phone for a clock, a horn, a megaphone, some clipboards and a tent. I’m not sure where we got the competitor jerseys. I don’t remember the divisions or even who won, but we had so much fun we knew this was going to evolve into a real surf contest series. Walls and Balzer deserve most of the credit for the format and divisions that were decided on. The format was pretty much the same as it is today. The sponsoring surf shops would provide swag, trophies and T-shirts and the club would run the contests. The series shops for that first, short season were ET Surf, Spyder Surf, Pier Surf, Dive N’ Surf and Becker Surf. The Grand Prize for the Men’s Division was a round trip ticket to Fiji. The idea was to motivate the local surf community, from the youngest grom to surf legends and surf pros.
A junior women’s heat enters the water during a blown out, late afternoon heat last winter. Photo by Steve Gaffney (SteveGaffney.com)
Mission accomplished
The first contest had about 50 competitors, but very few elementary and high school boys and zero girls. Today’s contests have over upwards of 200 competitors. The Micro Grom division is one of the most popular and there are multiple female divisions. Finn Bertino began surfing in the series when he was four years old. This winter he will be competing in the high school division. Bertino and dozens of others like him are a huge reason why we began the South Bay Boardriders Club. We felt a commitment to providing competitive surfing opportunities for young people in the South Bay who would otherwise have to travel long distances to surf in a contest. Now, young surfers from up and down the coast are traveling to surf in SBBC contests.
Many local surfers who started competing in the SBBC Surf Series have moved on to surf on college teams and professionally. Natalie Anzivino, who dominated the SBBC Women’s division for the first three years of the Contest Series now works as a Los Angeles County Lifeguard. Bethany Zelasco, who traveled up from Dana Point to compete in our contests, now surfs in Junior WSL contests. Her mother Paige told us the South Bay Boardriders’ contests were the best her daughter ever surfed in.
On the men’s side, Matt Pagan, Noah Collins, Will Reid, and brothers Dane and Kelly Zaun have moved on from the South Bay Surf Series to surf professionally. This year, SBBC competitors Alex Fry, Shane Frontino, and Rodney Buck recently surfed in their first professional contests. It is only a matter of time until SBBC surfer Parker Browning and several of his peers move on to professional contests.
We could not be prouder to see local surfers following their passion and finding success, in part because of the SBBC contest series.
Make it better
Each year, we strive to make the contests better for the competitors.
In 2011, we ran the entire contest out of one tent with clipboards, cell phones, pencils and paper.
For many years, Matt and I met at Matt’s house on the Thursdays before the contests to do the heat draws for the contest’s 11 divisions. We would do the seeding from past contest histories that Matt saved from the year before. Then we would try to predict the number of heats needed for each contest. This was very time consuming. After we thought we were finished and the entry deadline passed, we’d get phone calls to add competitors
Pencils and erasers for seeding and heat scoring got old, quick.
So, In 2012-13, I met with an Excel expert to see what could be done. What began as a program for tracking heat scores, today tracks not only heats, but also rankings through the year and seeds the first two rounds of the contests. It is also linked to our website registration, eliminating problems that plagued our early years.
At the start of the 2016-17 Surf Series, Karen Tominaga stepped up to help Matt with the heat draws.
In 2019, we will have laptops and printers to provide live computer scoring. An electronic clock and horn will signal the starts and endings of heats. Solar power will replace the noisy, polluting generators, and a trailer wrapped in our logo will haul equipment on and off the beach.
As part of our “guardians of our shoreline” mission statement, we no longer provide plastic water bottles. Instead local surf apparel company HippyTree provides water stations for refilling reusable water bottles.
The surf shops, sponsors, and the amazing South Bay community all have been integral to the Surf Series success. But, there is no way the Surf Series could have been successful without all the people who have volunteered, for a bagel and a cup of coffee, to spend their entire Saturdays keeping the contests on time and helping carry tables and tents on and off the beach,
Following are some of the people who have helped, (and apologies for the many others we’ve overlooked): Dave Schaefer, Karen Tominaga, Troy and Beth Campbell, Gus McConnell, Ed McKeegan, Jim Sepanek, Shane, Malia, Mike, and Mishell Balzer, Tara Ettley, Lisa and Jeff Honea, Tom and Darci Horton, Derek Levy, Dan Ryan, Alan Walti, Bill Graw (El Gringo), Jeff Bellandi (Waterman’s), Tim Tindell, Laura Hodges, Jennifer Stevens, Austin Nunis, and Chris Moseley.
SBBC co-contest directors Wright Adaza and Matt Walls contributed to this article. SBBC