While the sandy surf breaks along the coast of Wrightsville Beach are not renowned for delivering epic waves, the island is home base for several young surfers who are racking up impressive results in regional competitions.
In 2015, four wahines, 13-year-old Madeline Eckel, 14-year old Leah Thompson, 15-year-old Julia Eckel and 16-year-old Carly Carter have represented Wrightsville Beach at regional and national contests held in New Smyrna Beach, Fla., the Outer Banks, N.C., Virginia Beach, Va., and southern California.
The Eckel sisters’ dad, Brian Eckel, said the four girls are often grouped in the same age bracket during competitions, and they end up surfing against each other in the finals. They compete in both longboard and shortboard categories, excelling at the two different styles of wave riding.
In May, Thompson won the shortboard division and placed second in the longboard division of the same event, the Gnarly Charley Surf Contest. The victory came just weeks after she won the 2015 mid-Atlantic Regionals Surfing Championships in barreling, overhead conditions on the Outer Banks. Wrightsville Beach was well represented in that event, with Julia Eckel also taking home first prize in her age group.
“Six states, from Delaware to Georgia, were represented there at that contest,” said Thompson’s dad, Daniel Thompson. “That was a big accomplishment for Leah.”
Thompson’s recent results are even more impressive given her inexperience in contest surfing. Her dad taught her to surf when she was young, but she only began competing two years ago. Before competing on the water, she dominated the gymnastics arena, earning a top-five statewide ranking.
“She’s just a good little athlete,” her dad said. “It seems like she does well at any sport she tries.”
The Eckel sisters also learned to surf as kids. Unlike Thompson, their first contest experiences came not long after their first pop-ups. In 2008, when Madeline was 6 years old and Julia was 8, the grommets entered the East Coast Wahine Championships. Now, they are both team riders for Sweetwater Surf Shop, and Julia is one of 12 East Coast female surfers on the Eastern Surfing Association All-Star Team.
While the sisters favor different styles of surfing — Madeline prefers shortboarding, Julia longboarding — they still have a bit of friendly sibling rivalry, their dad said, which has elevated their surfing over the years. More often, though, contests pit the two longboarders, Julia Eckel and Carly Carter, against each other.
In three major regional competitions this year — the Virginia Beach Steel Pier Classic, the mid-Atlantic Regional Championships and the 2015 NSSA East Coast Championships in New Smyrna Beach — Carter and Eckel both advanced to the long board final. But, Brian Eckel said, they leave the rivalry out in the water.
“They travel together, so they’re literally best friends,” Eckel said, “but they’re very, very competitive when it comes to heat time.”
The girls’ performance in the East Coast Championships earned them a trip to California in mid-June to compete in the national championships. The competition was extremely tough, Carter said, and the waves at Seaside Beach were closing out. The girls didn’t win their heats, but Carter said surf trips are about more than just scoring contest results.
“We know it’s going to be a super hard contest,” she said. “We like to go out there and make a girls’ trip out of it.”
Their moms traveled with them to California, and Julia Eckel recently took a solo trip to Hawaii with the ESA All-Stars, but most surfing adventures involve the girls and their dads.
When Leah Thompson first started competing, her dad took her to contests, and he also competed.
“To try to help her feel more comfortable competing, I just started doing it with her, so we’ve been doing that together for the last few years,” he said.
With his daughter’s recent results, he acknowledged he probably wouldn’t need to enter contests alongside her much longer. However, Daniel Thompson, Brian Eckel and Michael Carter will likely still join their daughters out in the water on freesurfing trips.
They have traveled together to multiple countries, gaining knowledge of big waves and different cultures. In Hawaii, the girls met some of the stars of their sport, like world champion Carissa Moore and big-wave charger Garrett McNamara. In El Salvador, they built confidence paddling into lineups with high surf and higher testosterone levels.
Most lineups around the world are dominated by men, the girls agreed, including their own local surf breaks. Male surfers tend to be more aggressive, Julia Eckel added, so when they see other women out in the water, the girls gravitate toward them.
The girls are competitive and driven to improve their surfing, but they say equally important to them is the enjoyment of riding waves alongside friends. While they are tempted by the prospect of surfing professionally, Julia Eckel and Carly Carter, who are now in high school, agree a more realistic goal for their surfing careers would be to join a college surf team.
“We put in 110 percent effort, but if it doesn’t end up working out, that’s OK,” Carter said.
“We do it mostly for fun,” Eckel added.
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