The University of North Carolina Wilmington surf team again asserted itself as one of the top teams on the East Coast with a strong showing in the National Scholastic Surfing Association (NSSA) East Coast Regional Championships in New Smyrna Beach, Fla., April 9-11.
The team won the event for six consecutive years, 2009-2014. This year, it finished a close second to the University of North Florida.
“It’s exciting,” team member and surfing club president Zach Valenti said. “But of course we wanted to go there and get first, keep the streak alive.”
Of UNCW’s team — six male shortboarders, two female shortboarders and one longboarder — Valenti said, every male shortboard heat but one included a UNCW surfer. Conditions were challenging, with the six surfers in each heat battling to pick off decent waves in the choppy, inconsistent lineup.
“They double-beached [the college division],” Valenti said. “Two heats are running side by side in different areas of the beach. … You’ve got six guys in 100 yards having 15 minutes to catch the waves, so it’s pretty difficult, but it’s what East Coast surfing is all about. … You do the best you can with what you’re dealt with.”
Each surfer accumulated points based on his or her order of finish, and the top three surfers from each heat advanced to the next round. At the end of the event, points were tallied and the college with the most points won, Valenti explained.
Two UNCW surfers advanced all the way to the six-man shortboard final. Shane Burn finished third and Cobi Christianson finished fourth. Alek Rockrise clinched second place in the longboard division and Airlie Pickett finished third in women’s shortboard.
Valenti said while surfing Wrightsville Beach was good preparation for the sandy beachbreak at New Smyrna Beach Inlet, the team did not hold formal practices.
“It’s hard to set a practice when you can’t really predict the waves,” he said. “You can’t say, ‘Hey, we’re going to have practice Wednesday at 8 o’clock because … it could be completely flat.”
Valenti said the team is close, though, so he often paddles out and finds himself surfing alongside his teammates. The team friendships, he said, slightly lessened the sting of finishing in second place this year.
“Overall it was a great bonding experience — getting to take a weekend and actually compete and hang out with each other, go out to dinner together,” he said.
As a senior, he reflected that those are the memories he’ll take with him after graduation.
“In May, when I’m done with surf team … it’s one of those things I’ll be able to look back on way down the road and be like, ‘Man, that was quite the experience, to surf competitively with your friends and represent the school.’”
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