Blog

It’s been a busy two weeks with back-to-back competitions.  Last week in Texas and now this week up in Seattle, WA area.  The Northwest Wakesurf Association put on their 6th annual competition on Tye Lake in Monroe, WA, and like last year, it was a good one. The lake is small with no other boats allowed so conditions were great.  Supra Boats was the main sponsor and not only did they provide the tow boats but they provided some sweet breakfast goodies to kick the morning off.  My surf board sponsor, Day1 Wake, was another one of the sponsors. Speaking of Day1 Wake, I’ve been interested in getting into riding a skim board and they made me a super sick skim board to try out this week.  Loved it!  I’m lucky to have Bryce and Jonathan putting not only cool looking but high performance boards under my feet.

So with my new skim board in hand and my trusty surf board I was ready to compete in Pro Skim and Pro Surf.  The Wake9 crew was there to broadcast which is always nice.  Friends and family that couldn’t make the event were able to watch the broadcast on the internet.  They also save the entire broadcast for viewing online at any time too – awesome! Saturday was the qualifying rounds for both Pro divisions.  I had a really good run in surf style and landed a couple of my shuv tricks, air reverse, different types of aerials with grabs and topped it off with a Big Spin.  Although last week I was able to land the surf style 360-Shuv, it was not in the cards for me this weekend.  Gave it a shot and slipped off the board on landing.  My surf run put me through to the finals on Sunday.

My skim run was just ok.  I haven’t been riding a skim board for long but I’m eager to improve.  I was able to land a few decent tricks but it wasn’t enough to get me through to the finals for skim.  Aaron Witherell, Grant Witherell and James Walker all laid down impressive skim runs.

But the good news is I was able to win first place in the Pro Men’s Surf division!  It was my first, FIRST place win as a pro and to make things really cool the event paid out the prize money in a big wad of cash!  Sweet!

Now I’m going to spend the rest of this week hanging out with my pro surf buddies, Grant Witherell, Aaron Witherell and Chris Wolter in Washington.  We’re going to ride surf boards, skim boards, skate boards and any other kinds of boards we can find!

Thanks to everyone that worked hard to put on a great event and congratulations to all the competitors in each division:  Juniors, Masters, Amateurs, Outlaws and Pros.  I had a great time with everyone!

This past weekend was a big one for me.  The most recent stop in the CWSA World Series of WakeSurfing was in Texas down at the Texas Ski Ranch.  I was entered to compete as an Outlaw rider but was asked to move up into the Pro division.  Although nervous, I accepted the challenge and now, after the fact, I’m so glad I did!  I won 2nd place in Men’s Pro Surf and was able to share the podium with two guys I have looked up to for a long time:  Keenan Flegel and James Walker – both huge studs in this sport!

So I’m happy to say that I have reached the goal of being a Professional Wake Surfer and look forward to competing in all future events as a Pro!  Can’t wait to participate with such a talented and cool group of guys!

Thanks to all my sponsors and family for supporting me to do what I love to do!

The podium picture below shows me with Keenan and James.  So sick!!

Malibu Boats puts on a number of events around the country to promote wake boarding and wake surfing.  The Malibu crew came to Texas last month and I stopped in to compete in their small competition and to do some wake surfing with their Pro team rider Johnny Stieg.  Johnny is a great guy and we had some fun mixing it up behind the boat in some different ways.  You don’t see tandem dual 360s every day! Check out the video!

http://vimeo.com/101112237

I thought it would be fun to take one specific trick and perform it on 4 different types of boards – all in one day! One challenging trick that applies to all 4 of the sports is a 360 Shuv-It.  So we out to the Brazos River yesterday and filmed the trick on a wake skate, a skim board and finally my surf board.  Then, we headed up to Aqua Shop to shoot the trick on a flow board.  Thanks to Aqua Shop team for all their support of my flow boarding! So this little project was a lot of fun!  Check it out!