The Green Room

Heads up! M10 Surfboards currently has a new batch of premium series model surfboards available at their showroom. For the first time this year, shaper Geoff Rashe and crew have caught up to demand from custom orders and have had the opportunity to get some stock boards out on the rack at the showroom, all available at a reasonable price.

In addition, the shop has a plethora of used boards from other top labels such as Rusty, …Lost, Mayhem, Stretch and Channel Islands, all still in good condition and available at great deals. The used boards are piling up as surfers around town take advantage of M10’s trade-in incentive: bring in a used board in good condition and M10 will offer you credit towards a brand new M10 surfboard in exchange.

Swing by the M10 factory [401 Ingalls St. at Swift St. on the Westside] and see general manager Marco Foreman to find out if your next magic board just might be in stock…

"What you need?" 5'6" Hogfish to 8'0" guns, M10 manager Marco Foreman has got you covered.

Plenty of folks in Santa Cruz thought it was possible. Some even said it was only a matter of time. But few of us expected it would happen this soon.

Nat Young, the 17-year-old “Pride of the Westside,” won the 2008 O’Neill Cold Water Classic Sunday in pumping overhead surf at Steamer Lane. He is the youngest surfer ever to win the prestigious event and the first to bring the title back to Santa Cruz since Kieran Horn in 2003.

“It’s been a long day,” Young said after being carried up the stairs at Steamer Lane and mobbed by well-wishers and media. “I’ve been in my wetsuit since 7 a.m.”

Young’s first-ever victory in a World Qualifying Series event came by less than three-quarters of a point over second place finisher Chris Waring from Seal Beach. Maui’s Granger Larsen finished in third and Sean Moody, also from Hawaii, took fourth.

All four surfers surfed brilliantly during the final, which saw a booming northwest swell combine with an afternoon low tide for a wealth of waves pouring in off Lighthouse Point. The heat was so close that Young, who earned a final heat score of 13.87 out of a possible 20 points, and Moody were separated by less than two points.

“This was one of the best contests I think we’ve had in 21 years,” said Pat O’Neill, president and CEO of O’Neill Wetsuits. “The waves were always big enough for guys to get enough speed to pull off the most amazing maneuvers and really shine.”

No one shined brighter than than Young. After falling on his first two waves early in the final, Young settled down and found a solid opening score of a 6.5. Then, needing a score of at least 6.1 to take the lead, Young stroked into a medium-sized wave that walled up all the way through to the inside and linked together a series of vicious backside turns. The ride earned Young a 7.37, leapfrogging him past Waring and Moody for first place with eight minutes remaining in the heat. From there, Young was able to hold onto his slim 0.74-point lead until time expired.”I started off slow,” Young said. “I tried to go too big a couple times and fell. Then the waves started pumping and everything started to flow for me.”

It was the second big final in recent months for Young and Larsen, 18, who are developing quite the rivalry. The two also met in the finals of the National Scholastic Surfing Association’s National Championships at Lower Trestles this summer. Larsen, the favorite, wound up finishing runner-up to Young.

“I would say there’s a bit of a rivalry now, for sure,” Larsen said. “He had me. … Anyone could have won, but he’s the local, he knows the wave. Party at Nat’s house tonight!”

Larsen wasn’t the only one toasting Young on Sunday. In fact, it appeared as though half of Santa Cruz showed up at Lighthouse Point to cheer on the polite, freckle-faced grommet, who was the last local surfer remaining in the contest after fellow Santa Cruz surfers Bud Freitas, Randy Bonds and Jason “Ratboy” Collins were all eliminated in the semifinals.

The hometown crowd rallied behind Young, erupting with noise at every big backside turn, cringing any time a he dug a rail — which wasn’t often — and waving bright orange sings that read ‘Go Nat!’.

“Nike [one of Young's sponsors] made the signs and passed them out,” Young’s mom, Rosie, said. “Nat was a little shy about that.”

For Rosie Young, who has chauffeured her son up and down the California coast countless times for NSSA contests and other surfing events, his victory at the Cold Water represents the culmination of a five-year full-time commitment to her son’s surfing.

“Nat’s been surfing for five years now hardcore, every day,” she said. “Him winning the Cold Water at his age is something he can always be proud of, and it shows him what he’s capable of in the future.”

Youth was certainly the theme of the day as the average age of the four finalists was just 20. With underage surfers like Young and Larsen on the victory podium, contest directors had to quickly replace everyone’s beers with energy drinks and water before bestowing the finalists with the traditional victory soaking.

When asked what he planned to do with his $10,000 first-place check, a sopping-wet and shivering Young gave a prudent answer well beyond his grom years. “I’m going to put the money in my bank account,” he said.

O’Neill, who has known Young since he first began surfing for Team O’Neill at the age of five, said he had a special feeling watching Young’s run through the Cold Water.

“I’m so proud of Nat,” O’Neill said. “Last year, watching him in the Pro Junior, I just had a feeling he was going to win it, and I got that same feeling watching him in the contest this year.”

With the 2007 Pro Junior title and this year’s Cold Water both under his belt, O’Neill said there’s only one feat left for Young at next year’s Cold Water.

“He can still surf in the Pro Junior event until he’s 20,” O’Neill said, “so he’s got a few years to try and win them both.”

On Saturday, Santa Cruz board builder Ward Coffey was locked inside a Southern California shaping bay and asked to replicate a classic 1979 Bill Caster surfboard in an hour and a half.

Today, his shape will vie with five others to be declared the winner of the second annual Tribute to the Masters Shape-off at the Sacred Craft Consumer Surfboard Expo in Del Mar. Each of the five boards will have been crafted by an esteemed shaper representing a different surfing region from both the east and west coasts

Last year, San Mateo’s Marc Andreini represented Northern California in the shape-off. This year the honor was bestowed upon Coffey.

“I’ve known Ward for a long time,” event producer Scott Bass said. “He came down last year to cheer on Marc Andreini. Santa Cruz has so many facets to its surf culture, but one of the greatest things about the town is there’s tons of great shapers up there. [Coffey] is one of them. He’s totally into hand-crafted surfboards.”

Even if he hadn’t been asked to participate in the shape-off, Coffey said he wouldn’t miss a gathering like the Sacred Craft surfboard expo. Last year he was one of the few shapers from up north who made the eight-hour drive south to attend the inaugural event.

“From a shaping point of view, and surfing point of view, you can walk into anyone’s booth and check out a board and know where to surf it and when to surf it,” said

Coffey, who made the trip along with fellow Santa Cruz shaper Michel Junod. “You basically want to ride everything. It’s like, ‘Where’s the wax, I’m ready to go!”I got to see Terry Martin [Orange County master shaper of 45 years] shape. I got to talk story with him, discuss new ideas. I came away from the show feeling like I’m walking in the footsteps of the masters.”

Coffey shaped his first board in 1979, a year after relocating to Santa Cruz from Alameda. But it wasn’t until 1983 that he began his formal introduction to the craft, under the tutelage of Arrow Surfboards’ Bob Pearson. Coffey was surfing out at Four Mile when Pearson noticed Coffey’s self-shaped board. After admiring the green shaper’s work and comparing notes, Pearson invited Coffey to come by his shop and watch him shape some boards. Coffey wound up working in the Arrow surfboard factory for the next 10 years, learning each step of the production process, from shaping to glassing to sanding.

“The time I spent at Arrow, I would hang that on the wall as a proud time of my life,” Coffey said.

In 1990, he left Arrow to start Ward Coffey Surfboards. Now 48, Coffey continues to shape all his boards by hand. Nearly every one is a custom order from his loyal following of surfers between Big Sur and San Francisco.

The five other shapers competing with Coffey in this year’s Tribute to the Masters Shape-off include: Matt Calvani [Los Angeles], Timmy Patterson [Dana Point], Chris Christenson [San Diego], Ned McMahon [San Diego] and defending champion Ricky Carroll [Florida]. Carroll’s winning design last year replicated a classic Mike Diffenderfer shape.

This year, the winner receives $1,000 and a full-page ad in Surfing Magazine.

Whether or not his shape is selected as the winner today, Coffey said experiencing the camaraderie and new ideas spilling out of the Sacred Craft surfboard expo was the real prize.

“In a nutshell, we have a really small industry, and it was started here in California,” Coffey said. “The people who have been doing it a long time, we’re all craftsmen, we’re all artists. When we get together and look at the stuff that’s made, you realize how special it is. We make the coolest toys around.”

A memorial paddle-out will be held Tuesday to honor the memory of Santa Cruz surfer Mike Green, who died while out surfing at Shark’s Cove on Thursday. The paddle-out, being organized by the folks at Freeline Surf Shop on 41st Avenue, is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. at the Hook on the Eastside of Santa Cruz. Anyone who wishes to participate is welcome to attend.

For more info stop by Freeline.

A small encampment of smiling people lying on beach towels and sitting in folding chairs was the only sign that the biggest bodysurfing event in Northern California was happening in Santa Cruz. There were no sponsor tents, no sound systems thumping out music, no contest announcer. Just an inconspicuous scattering of swim fins and wetsuits on the sand in front of a nice peak breaking at 26th Avenue Beach.

Eric Gustafson of San Francisco, above, looks out from the mouth of a 26th Avenue barrel during a senior men’s heat Saturday.

The Santa Cruz Bodysurfing Association’s annual California Bodysurfing Championships was held in typical low-key fashion on Saturday. The contest, first started in 1983, continues to run relatively unchanged since its inception. That includes the pancake breakfast for participants at event director Tish “The Fish” Denevan’s house, a group barbeque, and no mention of prize money anywhere. The competition aspect remains informal [Denevan walked the beach Saturday asking if anyone wanted to help judge heats while the other judges headed out in the water]. It’s less about a contest and more about gathering the small, scattered tribe of bodysurfers, Denevan said.

“It’s a little bit lonely out there,” Denevan said. “Anytime you see another bodysurfer out in the water, you naturally gravitate to them. If I ever meet another bodysurfer I say, ‘Hey, join our contest!’”

When asked what she liked most about putting on the event every year, Denevan described a “feeling of being connected with everybody” and “the camaraderie.”While stand-up surfing today is featured in mainstream movies, fashion and advertisements, bodysurfers continue to operate under the radar. There are no bodysurfing magazines, no professional bodysurfing tour, and even the world’s most talented practitioners perform their dolphin-like acts to little fanfare or recognition. “Professional bodysurfer” remains an oxymoron.

Aside from wave riding of dolphins and seals, bodysurfing is a rare sight along our coast. The small cadre of lifeguards and water people who regularly partake in the sport are often forced to do so alone.

Case in point: Two bodysurfers at this year’s contest meet on the beach and begin talking about the waves. It turns out they both live in San Francisco and often surf the same spots. Both said they usually go out alone and were happy to find a partner to paddle out with, “especially on a big day at Ocean Beach.”

Nick Harvey shoots out of a large wave off of 26th Avenue on Saturday during the first semi-final junior men’s heat.

One of the men, Eric Gustafson, said that in the nearly 15 years he’s been living in San Francisco, he had only met three other bodysurfers — in a city trafficked by a million people every day. While the small number of bodysurfers around San Francisco may have something to do with the frigid waters and punishing surf of Ocean Beach, most of the bodysurfers at 26th Avenue on Saturday agreed they were something of a dying breed.

“There aren’t many of us,” said bodysurfer Peter Horak, of Santa Cruz. “Look around — a bunch of silver streaks.”

Quinn Sandberg, 17, was one of the few youngsters surfing in Saturday’s event. Sandberg, a senior at Soquel High, said he was one of just a few kids at his school who like to bodysurf. He attributed the underground nature of bodysurfing in part to the lack of commercial opportunities to make money off the sport.

“There aren’t really any products to sell besides swim fins,” he said. “They’re not selling anything with bodysurfing. There’s no magazines or shops or anything like that. There’s a lot more of that with stand-up surfing.”

A small clan of 31 bodysurfers from up and down the California coast — nearly half made the trip up from Southern California — showed up for Saturday’s gathering. They were treated to some pretty good conditions: The sun shone down all day as a fogbank was kept at bay far offshore and 2- to 3-foot green waves peeled left and right before hollowing out onto the sand.

Among this year’s contestants was Judith Sheridan, the San Francisco bodysurfer of underground surfing lore known for her fearless sessions out at triple-overhead Ocean Beach and as the only person ever to attempt to bodysurf Maverick’s. Sheridan said the attraction of bodysurfing is simple: an undeniably smoother, more intimate interaction with the wave itself, without the board as intermediary.

“I don’t like the idea of all this gear,” she said. “[With bodysurfing] there’s nothing between you and the water.”

For nearly 20 years the Mermen have been playing their own unique brand of surf rock.

The band, formed in San Francisco in 1989, has toured with the likes of Dick Dale and the Ventures and been featured on the soundtracks of countless surf movies, including just about every Maverick’s film ever made. They have also been dubbed “the official band of Maverick’s” by Jeff Clark himself.

But to lump the Mermen under the umbrella of “surf music” betrays an ear unfamiliar with the ocean and its many moods. For those who insist on labels, try “ocean music.” Nothing communicates the essence of the sea, particularly the chilly waters of the Northern California coast, as powerfully as the Mermen. When you play their music, you can hear the pounding surf and shifting sandbars of San Francisco’s Ocean Beach, the thick bull kelp swaying off the rocky North Coast, and the teeming wildlife of the Monterey Bay.

After 20 years of drawing inspiration from the fog and unruly beachbreak of Ocean Beach, Mermen founder and lead guitarist, Jim Thomas, who composes and produces all the band’s music, relocated to Santa Cruz. With the help of part-time Mermen bassist Jennifer Burnes, he built a recording studio/lair of the avant-garde on the Eastside of town out of an old storage space.

How would the reefs and coves of a sunny surf town like Santa Cruz influence the music? We’ll soon find out. The Mermen are set to release their first new record in nearly eight years. In the following interview at the Mermen studio, Thomas talks about his migration 70 miles down the coast and the band’s highly anticipated new album:

Q: So Jim, you’ve left Ocean Beach for the Eastside. After five years, what do you think of Santa Cruz?

A: I like Santa Cruz. It was hard leaving San Francisco, but Santa Cruz has its own thing going. Me and Jennifer are here, Martyn [Jones, Mermen drummer] is still up there in San Mateo. But you know, I lived in San Francisco for 20 years. I was looking for a place to do a studio. I would have rather not left San Francisco, which was a bad move in retrospect because I didn’t realize how much my community was established there. And once you leave San Francisco, you know, people start to hold it against you. If you’re in Berkeley or San Francisco or Oakland people tend to feel like you’re part of the hometown crew and they support you. But the minute they even see your phone number change, they’re like, ‘What the heck, what’s this 831 stuff?’ you know. I’m not kidding man. But, I figured 20 years there, I’m just gonna try something different. If I was up there I probably would have made three new albums by now. Because I got down here and it was like…

Q: You can definitely surf more often down here. More time getting distracted by waves.

A: You know, this is not San Francisco. Santa Cruz is like a small town where everybody knows what everybody else is doing. Up in SF nobody cares what anybody else is doing, right? And it’s a lot different in regards to the music scene. [In SF] it’s really harsh and intense and real competitive. If you’re into writing or art or whatever, SF is a great place because it’s competitive. It’s like New York City in that respect. Santa Cruz reminds me a lot of a small town. But this place has got some amazing people. Like Barney and Flea for example. I look at those guys and they’re really interesting people. Really soulful. They’re like cowboys, they do scary shit. They just don’t go by the book, you know. When I see Flea riding a wave that big and being so aggressive with it, it’s like what the heck is that?
Santa Cruz is a great town. Having toured a lot all over the U.S., probably to every major city in the country, gone back and forth probably 25-30 times, there is no place like the Bay Area and Santa Cruz. Here we have Big Sur. We’ve got that whole stretch up the coast [north of town] for 70 miles. We’ve got the north coast. And Santa Cruz is an interesting town. A lot of young people, it’s a surfing town, plus this area is one of the premier areas in the world where people are doing ocean science and preserving the Monterey Sanctuary. All the biggest ocean scientists are here. And then there are a lot of people who are … over the top I’ll call it. A lot of freaks, a lot of hippies. Surfer freaks, and surfer punks and surfer gangs, it’s got it all.

Q: You guys have always been very open and encouraging about sharing the Mermen’s music with fans for download. Could you talk a little about that?

A: Right now is a time where it’s so difficult to regulate. What can you do? Once you have music out there, it’s just a virtual world and it just goes everywhere and people get it for nothing. So people want to pay for our music, they pay for our music. They can get it for free if they want. I just don’t care. I’m so much more interested in just making music. I’ve never been interested in making money, to the chagrin of everybody around me. I’ve never been really ambitious about making a lot of money. It’s nice to have it, and I’ve sold music for a lot of money, but I’m just not the kind of guy who’s gotta have a nice car, gotta have a nice house, gotta have all this bullshit. So, yeah, the music’s free. And now we’ve established such a history of providing the live recordings for free, we have to continue to let people have them for free. I was talking to the guy who recorded our last show and we were talking about whether to sell it or to give it away for free. I decided we’ve been giving em away for free for all these years, we just gotta keep giving it a way for free.

Q: Did you surf with Grant [Washburn] and Doc [Renneker] and John [Raymond] and others from that original Ocean Beach/Mav’s crew back in the day?

A: Not really. Grant was in a whole other league. We lived in the same area, so we’d see each other out in the water, but I was never in the same class as those guys, you know. Even though I know Grant and Jeff [Clark] and all these people are my buddies I just… All those years I lived at Ocean Beach I saw days…man, and even days when I would paddle out that were way beyond my ability, where I put two leashes on because I thought if I ever lost my board out there, I would drown. And I’d be paddling over waves and I’d have to blink because I couldn’t comprehend that the wave was that big. And yet I wasn’t getting killed, so that was a good feeling.

Q: I just always think of that photo you guys put on the inside of the “Food for Other Fish” album [of Washburn at the bottom of a heaving, dark, outer bar Ocean Beach wave pushing 20 feet]. That photo is just ridiculous. How do you even get outside on a day like that?

A: Grant has been a huge support to the Mermen. You know, he and I learned to surf in the same town in New Jersey. Lavalette, New Jersey. He’s from Connecticut, but his parents own a house in Lavalette, where my parents used to rent a house in the summer. So we learned to surf at the same beach. Grant and I have had this resonant thing over the years. He loves the music. All the years we’ve known each other, he’s used our music in every one of his films. And Jeff too. It’s been a good relationship. A lot of the Maverick’s guys have always supported the music. Our ties to all the surf music scene over the years have become really strong, you know. I’ve met the guy who screamed at the beginning of “Wipeout,” I’ve met the guy who wrote “Pipeline.” Every surf hit known to man, I’ve met all these people over the years: The Ventures, played with Dick Dale ten times. It’s been an interesting trip. And I’m just from New Jersey.

Q: Yeah, how is that? That’s interesting to me, because I’ve always felt like you’re music captures the essence of the Northern California coast. You hear Ocean Beach in your music. It’s insane. How did you get in touch with that?

A: I don’t know. I think it’s just the fact that I love the ocean and have always lived by the ocean my whole life. I’ve always lived close to the beach and I’ve never felt comfortable anywhere else. I’ve always surfed. I’ve had a good ten years of my life where all I did was surf and travel. Surfed the Jersey shore in the winter in a full wetsuit in the snow and the ice. I think it’s informed by all that. I love surfing, I love music, I love the ocean.
The funny thing was I came to San Francisco from New Jersey with nothing. I came out here with one surfboard and an acoustic guitar. And I was in a real apathetic state. I didn’t care about doing anything. I got a job I hated. I hated it all. But then I saw a job ad in the newspaper in San Francisco for a music store salesperson. I thought, ‘that looks interesting.’ I went through interview and I wanted that job so bad. They gave me the job, I ended up doing really well there. And what happened was I ended up writing all the music for what ended up being “Krill Slippin’” [the Mermen’s first record] in the music store when things were slow. We sold four track recorders and I would play customers the songs I had written while I was showing them how to use the four track. These songs became the demo tape for what would be “Krill Slippin’”. Sometimes when I was selling people on equipment, I would write parts of songs on the spot.

Q: What did the people you were selling this equipment to think of your songs when you played them?

A: Oh, most of them didn’t give a flying [crap]. But you know you did? Allen Whitman [original Mermen bassist] was working there, and there was this girl that worked in the music store. Allen had to be in the band and that girl cared enough to finance our fist record.

Q: You guys are currently working on your seventh album. When can we expect to get our hands on it?

A: Probably a few months still. I’ve been working on this one song and it’s taking me forever. Trying to get a song where you need it to be involves a lot of pushing and shoving, you know. It’s kind of like surfing and trying to get in just the right spot on a wave that just wants to kick your ass.

Q: Is it true this August recording session was really the first new Mermen recording session in ten years?

A: Yeah. We’ve done a lot of playing together in here, but this is the first formal recording with quality tracks where we hired an engineer and we set up a huge amount of mikes and made a lot of noise and pissed off all the neighbors.

Q: How would you describe the music on this new album? What kind of sound were you going for?

A: It’s hard to describe. There are songs that are really ethereal and others, like this one I wrote, that’s like this very epic cowboy disco song. Yeah, go figure. Ever see the movie “The Good the Bad and the Ugly”? Well, Ennio Morricone wrote the music to that. I love doing that type of stuff. Sometimes people will write about us and say that the Mermen are all classic surf music. The Mermen are as far from classic surf music as possible. We get mislabeled all the time. I love all that old surf music and I play it all, but we don’t like to limit ourselves to that.

Q: Anything in particular inspire you?

A: Sometimes, but that usually never really feels right to me. You know how you have dreams? Well, I think of my music as what I dream. That’s what it feels like to me, like you’re dreaming of this perfect form. You can think of it like a perfect wave. So you have a dream where you are in that perfect form of the perfect wave, this resonant form. So the music is like putting a carrot out in front of my donkey, which is myself. I’m trying to move towards that perfect form. And maybe it’s something that will never completely come true for me, and it feels very much disembodied from me, in the sense that it’s beyond my own experience. And it could be really beautiful and resonant and perfect and meaningful to so many people — because I get lots of letters from people describing these feelings from our music — but I use the word disembodied, because it really is outside of me. It really is like a dream. Even though you’re part of it, it’s as if your body and your mind know something that you don’t know consciously. The form that we are as humans, we are evolving things. The closest I’ve really come to explaining it for myself what music is to me, is that it reminds me of dreaming. I can say all my songs are like dreams I’ve had. And I write the dream down as a song. But the dream is a tension between where I am and where I want to be. You’re growing into something greater. It’s like with surfing. As you build your skills through your life you get better and better and you reach a point where, because you have accumulated all these skills you can surf an incredibly heavy wave and deal with it. So dreaming is like grasping for that perfect form you want to get to.

Check out over 100 recordings of live performances by the Mermen available for download at www.archive.org.

Nat Young was in Seignosse, France all week competing for the USA Surf Team at the International Surfing Association World Junior Championships. With the eyes of the entire surfing world watching, Young put in the best performance of any male surfer representing the USA.

Surfing against the best junior surfers from around the world — 28 countries sent their best — Young, 16, made it to the quarterfinals of the Boys Under 18 division. The talented goofy footer from the Westside of Santa Cruz placed first in his two opening round heats and second in his third round heat. After winning his fourth round heat, knocking off countrymen Dillon Perillo and Tyler Newton, Young looked poised to continue his campaign all the way to the finals. Unfortunately, Young couldn’t quite find the waves he needed in the quarters and finished third behind Paco Divers of New Zealand and eventual champion, Alejo Muniz, from Brazil. Nevertheless, it was an incredible run by the most promising competitive surfer to emerge from Santa Cruz in recent memory. Young’s points also helped Team USA improve its overall team performance from fifth place last year to fourth place in 2008.

Australia claimed the Team World Championship for the third year in a row. Brazil took the silver and Australia the bronze. Team USA finished in fourth place earning the copper medal.

What to do when almost 100 surfers show up at the beach for a surf contest but the surf fails to follow suit?This was the question facing surfers and organizers at the fifth annual Schralpfest surf contest at Pleasure Point on Saturday, which saw plenty of enthusiastic young surfers, but mostly weak ankle to knee-high waves struggling to break through the lineup.

Fortunately, Schralpfest is about a lot more than just competitive surfing.

“It’s all about giving kids something positive to do, whether it’s a surf contest, trips to skateparks or dances,” said Jenny Useldinger, 23, who went on to win the women’s event. “I grew up on 34th Ave. Back then, living near the Point, there was a lot of drugs and alcohol around. [Schralpfest] definitely puts on a positive vibe.”

Seven Adams works over a small Pleasure Point wave in an early Shralpfest heat Saturday morning.

Schralpfest is a total grassroots surf contest, organized for the youth of the community by the youth of the community. The event is hosted by The Core, a local youth group founded in 2002 to give kids around town positive recreational, social and educational activities to engage in. The Core members — ranging from middle-school-age kids to 21-year-olds — meets weekly to organize concerts, dances, educational speakers, mentorships, and the Core run-swim-run.

“We’ve been getting a lot of younger kids,” said Kim Clary, who founded The Core in 2002, “but even as our original kids get older they aren’t leaving. They’re staying on and mentoring the younger kids. They all work together to put on this event.”

Some big names showed up for the Pro-am division, including Peter Mel — who also helped MC the event — Anthony Ruffo, Homer Henard, and eventual winner Jason “Ratboy” Collins. But it wasn’t just for the $500 prize purse, said pro surfer and Schralpfest contest director, Matt Myers.

“You see pros like Peter Mel and Homer Henard out surfing in the contest and hanging out with everyone even though the waves aren’t good,” Myers said. “Normally you would be over it and out of here, but everyone is hanging out to support the kids.”

This year’s contest saw 90 surfers of all ages sign up to participate at the beach in the early morning.

In addition to being able to surf in one of the more popular local amateur contest, kids were treated to a free lunch from Aloha Island Grill, a T-shirt and entry into a raffle for prizes like wetsuits and surfboards.

Despite being micro, the waves were still contestable, especially for the smaller groms, and plenty of small wave hotdogging was on display.

Jacob Davis slices through a cutback in his grom heat at the Shralpfest Saturday at Pleasure Point.

Noah Wegrich “schralped” his way to first place in the Groms event and Jason Hdez won the Juniors. In the women’s open, it was Sahara Ray and McKenzie Stair taking second and third respectively behind Useldinger, who said she was just happy to be a part of such a community oriented surf contest.

“It’s just cool that it’s all local kids putting it on,” Useldinger said. “It’s something that the city was lacking when I was growing up.”

This just in from Mission Hill Middle School surf team coach Jeff Osborne…

Mission Hill Middle School sent eight students to the Interscholastic Surfing
Association (ISF) Middle School State Surfing Championships, which were held
in waist to overhead surf last Saturday and Sunday (May 17-18) in Oceanside.

Seventh grader Asia Carpenter took seventh overall in girls shortboard. Riding
a borrowed Surftech softop, eighth grader Grady Nixen finished eighth in boys
longboard.

Congratulations to the Harbor High Surf Team. The Pirates completed a perfect undefeated 2008 Interscholastic Surfing Federation Santa Cruz season by beating Half Moon Bay on Sunday, May 11 at the Hook. The waves were pretty lackluster but all the teams still showed up in force to enjoy the fifth and final meet of the ISF season. The final standings are as follows:

1. Harbor  5-0

T-2. Scotts Valley 4-1

T-2. Aptos  4-1

T-3. Half Moon Bay  3-2

T-3. Soquel  3-2

T-5. Santa Cruz  0-5

T-5. Menlo Atherton  0-5

Here are the full results from the last contest of the season…

Team Results
Aptos 56, Soquel 39
Harbor 71, Half Moon Bay 54
Scotts Valley 50, Santa Cruz 18

Individual Results

Coed Bodyboard
1. Kurt Selander - SV
2. Jonathan Poore - SV
3. Grady Brannon - SV
4. Rachel Graham - HMB

Womens Longboard
1. Lexie Hinn - S
2. Kelly Edmonds - S
3. Rachel Graham -HMB
4. Audrey Bullwinkel - MA
5. Samantha Vingo - HMB
6. Alex Beck - A

Mens Longboard
1. Kai Medeiros - H
2. Pat Shaughnessy - SV
3. Jordy Pastor - S
4. Kyle Alreck - SV
5. Jonathan Poore - SV
6. Michael Joshua - HMB

Womens Shortboard
1. Elena Quinjano - S
2. Carly Wilson - H
3. Lexie Hinn - S
4. Kelly Edmonds - S
5. Samantha Vingo - HMB
6. Paige Reeder - H

Mens Shortboard
1. Shaun Burns - SC
2. Ben Frisby - H
3. Kyle Alreck - SV
4. Hunter Koronkowski - H
5. Logan  Banks - SC
6. Tyler Gottsegen - SC