A handful of the world’s elite paddleboarders will take on local talent in a wave-riding competition at Wrightsville Beach beginning Saturday, April 17.
The Wrightsville Beach SUP Surf Pro-Am is a part of the four-day Waterman Ocean Festival celebrating one of Wrightsville Beach’s signature watersports, standup paddleboarding, while raising money to fund Wrightsville Beach Museum of History’s newly formed Waterman Hall of Fame.
The festival begins Thursday, April 16, when the museum welcomes 35 children from the YWCA’s afterschool program for a paddleboarding clinic hosted by Jarrod Covington of Wrightsville SUP and Jo Pickett of Crystal South Surf Camp.
The water is too cold to take the children out into the surf, contest organizer John Sideris said, but Covington and Pickett will teach the kids about surfing etiquette and bring several boards and paddles to demonstrate paddling techniques.
“We try to target underprivileged kids who probably wouldn’t make it out to the beach or even see a surfboard or a standup paddleboard,” Sideris said.
After the clinic, the kids will learn about the history of Wrightsville Beach surfing from local waterman and historian Skip Funderburg.
“He did this last year and it was a huge success, the kids loved it,” Sideris said.
Both divisions of the competition, amateur and professional, begin Saturday morning on the south side of Crystal Pier. Participants with boards longer than nine feet may also enter the longboard style division, which will highlight retro longboard maneuvers like cross-stepping and noseriding. The pro division will likely feature more radical paddlesurfing on shorter, high-performance boards.
“They use the paddle to help them with their maneuvers,” Sideris explained. “They can get up and out of the wave quicker and turn sharper, because they’re using the paddle kind of like a rudder.”
The pros will battle for cash prizes and the participant with the highest combined finish in the pro and longboard divisions will receive the $500 Newkirk Waterman Award, donated by the Newkirk family in remembrance of Wrightsville Beach waterman Haywood Newkirk Sr.
All locals who enter the pro division to test themselves against elite paddlers like three-time world longboard champion Colin McPhillips will be eligible to be crowned the Carolina BAMF — or Best Amateur Finisher, Sideris said.
While the competition showcases some of the area’s top watermen, proceeds from the event help honor both present and past local heroes of the waterman lifestyle.
Funds from the contest will allow the Wrightsville Beach Museum of History to continue inducting members into its Waterman Hall of Fame, which it created in 2014. Museum director Madeline Flagler said this fall, the museum will induct five more people who have excelled in their chosen watersport and positively impacted the vast and interconnected community of local surfers, sailors, fishermen, swimmers and paddleboarders.
Each inductee’s name will be displayed on a plaque in the museum along with an essay about his or her accomplishments, Flagler said.
“So it becomes not only a recognition, but also a concrete history that is captured and put in a permanent place,” she said.
For more information visit www.wbsupsurfproam.com
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