It wasn’t smooth or easy, but Hawaii school administrators, students and surfing advocates made a successful big drop this year with the introduction of wave riding as a statewide high school sport.
Close to 600 students at around 60 public and private schools are participating in the inaugural season of surfing under the Hawaii High School Athletic Association less than nine months after the state Legislature appropriated funding for the sport and less than seven months after HHSAA announced that enough schools would participate to hold a state championship.
The achievement represents what many supporters regarded as long overdue when considering Hawaii as the cradle of surfing.
Student-athletes in three divisions each for girls and boys — shortboarding, longboarding and bodyboarding — competed in three or four contests from February to April, leading to individual league championship events where top finishers will get to compete in the state championship scheduled for Friday and Saturday on Maui.
The biggest of the five HHSAA leagues, the Oahu Interscholastic Association, held its championship Monday at Kewalos where 108 slots were filled by students competing in 30 heats, each running 15 minutes for six surfers at a time. Two qualifying rounds led to a final round with one heat for each division.
A points system was used to recognize a school team as champion.
“We’re going to crown a champion today,” event announcer Iolani Adams declared shortly after the competition began with clean, often shoulder-high waves. “First time in Oahu history over here.”
The all-day event at the break along the Diamond Head side of the Kewalo Basin Small Boat Harbor channel in Kakaako followed three earlier OIA contests where about 200 students from 20 public schools competed.
Thirty OIA schools have sports programs, and the 10 not participating in surfing this year were six charter schools and four regular schools. The otherwise strong turnout led organizers to divide two of the earlier OIA contests into separate two-day events with half the schools competing one day and the other half the next day.
Reid Yoshikawa, the athletic director at Kaimuki High School who became the OIA’s surf league adviser, said he didn’t know going in what he would encounter.
“We had a lot of participation — more participation than what I thought,” he said.
Yoshikawa said he received much help from an advisory committee that included two parents involved with club-level surfing in schools: Joslyn Sato, whose daughter Kylie was an instrumental advocate for the legislative funding, and Amy Schiffner, whose daughter Elliana attends Kaiser High School and has been a competitive surfer since she was a small child.
Amy Schiffner said she’s heard a lot of chatter at the contests from parents and students that they can’t believe surfing is now a high school sport — and that they are part of it.
“The kids feel incredibly stoked and also honored,” she said.
Schiffner added that student athletes also have a lot of pride in being able to represent their schools and Hawaii, which is the birthplace of surfing and the only place in the United States where surfing is a statewide school sport.
Getting there wasn’t easy. Many schools needed to recruit coaches, who were required to obtain safety certifications before being able to hold practices. Students wanting to participate had to obtain junior lifeguard certifications.
For contests, county permits had to be obtained for surf breaks, some of which have limited slots that were already full. The events also needed to be managed, scored by experienced judges and monitored by safety crews on watercraft.
Students provided their own boards, but school buses couldn’t transport longboards and other equipment. Colored jerseys featuring school logos also had to be made.
All of it was accomplished with many contributing hands that included an offshoot of the Hawaii Surfing Association running OIA events and instant scoring results carried on .
Former pro surfer Shawn Sutton agreed to become the head surf coach for Campbell High School in Ewa Beach after another prospect couldn’t do it, and his friend Matthew Kenny, who competes in amateur contests, is assistant coach.