Two local surfers took home honors in a national surfing competition, continuing a string of recent success by surfers who call the waves of Wrightsville Beach home.
Wilmington’s Gabe Morvil won the Explorer Men’s Division of the National Scholastic Surfing Association (NSSA) national championships in Huntington Beach, California, on July 3, and Wrightsville Beach’s Leah Thompson was named Rookie of the Year for making the Open Girls final and the Explorer Girls semifinal in her first national competition.
In 1994, local surfer Ben Bourgeois won the national contest on his way to a World Championship Tour career, representing Wrightsville Beach on a competitive circuit usually dominated by Californians and Hawaiians. Last year, Wilmington’s Bo Raynor became the first to follow in Bourgeois’ footsteps with his own national title.
Morvil and Thompson’s achievements come one year after Raynor won the Explorer Boys division. After this year’s contest, West Coast residents were remarking on the recent success of Wrightsville Beach surfers, noted Thompson’s father, Daniel Thompson.
That run of success shared between multiple surfers is likely no coincidence. All three — Raynor, Morvil and Thompson — surf together, and they push each other to improve.
“We like to better each other’s moves,” Morvil said, adding, “It’s fun.”
Morvil said it is especially nice to win, and for his friends to win, in the powerful, larger West Coast surf, coming from a beach where, he admitted, “There are barely any waves.”
In his final, Morvil beat three surfers with experience in the larger surf: two Hawaiians and a Californian. The surf was “pretty tough,” he said — stomach-high and closing out. Instead of paddling out near the pier where the other surfers were hassling for waves, he found his own spot further south.
“Gabe was able to catch any wave he wanted,” said Leah Thompson, who, along with Raynor, cheered him on from the beach.
Morvil and Raynor have competed at nationals for years, but it was Thompson’s first trip. She wasn’t expecting to advance through the prestigious Open division, much less make the final and finish fourth overall. She advanced to the final in dramatic fashion, catching the winning wave of her semifinal in the dying seconds.
She entered both the Explorer and Open divisions, but she assumed that when she lost her Explorer semifinal, she’d lost her chance to win at Nationals. She and her mom booked their flight home before Open division finals.
But Thompson advanced through the opening rounds, so they postponed their flight and drove to the beach for Thompson’s quarterfinal. Even then, her mother only paid one hour’s worth of parking.
“I didn’t want to be presumptuous,” she said, laughing.
She soon found herself feeding the meter again. And again, after Thompson’s thrilling semifinal performance.
With five minutes to go, Thompson needed a seven-point wave to advance to the final. She caught a wave but it closed out, so she frantically paddled back to the lineup. With one minute to go, a wave appeared in front of her, right next to the pier. She stroked into it but only had room to pull one maneuver.
She rode the whitewater to shore. She couldn’t hear the beach commentators, so she looked for her mom’s expression to gauge whether she’d gotten the necessary score. Her mom was grinning.
“I was like, ‘I made it!’ I was so happy,” Thompson said.
In the final, Thompson came up against three well-known Californians, including the top young female surfer in the United States, Caroline Marks.
“It was so cool to surf against her, she’s such a huge name,” Thompson said.
She didn’t finish No. 1, but she did earn an unexpected honor: the Carissa Moore Rookie of the Year award, named after the world champion from Hawaii. The award was even more special because Thompson met Moore last year after a southern California surf session.
Thompson has plenty of inspiration closer to home. Since returning from California, she has shared the waves with Bourgeois. A lot of young, local surfers look up to him and hope to have his success, her dad said.
“Sooner or later, somebody was going to break through, and last year, Bo did,” he said. “Now these guys are following.”
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