Junior surfers star in big and small waves

Suis felt unusually sedate this winter — just us oldsters, age 19 and up.

One Saturday in late March, between glassy little, off-season waves, I found myself humming the tune “Sunrise, Sunset” from “Fiddler on the Roof,” adding new lyrics: “Where is that little grom who snaked me? Where is that drop-in ace, age 9?”

The youngsters have graduated to the big time: the Country.

“Where’s your nephew?” I asked Ben, a 40-something architect.

“Oh, he’s outgrown Suis,” Ben said with his mellow smile and a flash of pride. “He’s at Rocky Point and Backdoor.”

His nephew surfs all around the island with the Mid-Pacific Institute surf team, which won the ILH title last year in its debut season, Ben said. “It’s so nice that they get academic credit and don’t have to cut class to surf the way we used to.”

Swiftly flow the years.

LIKE UNDERSTUDIES who catch a lucky break, teen surfers stole the show on the North Shore this spring after the established stars of the World Surf League moved on to Australia and other stops on the championship tour.

In late March, the Country rolled out some big bonuses: Triple-overhead waves barrelled into Pipeline during the WSL qualifying series contests of the Wahine Pipe Pro and Pipe Pro Junior, and the young competitors paddled out and charged with courage, skill and agility to post breathtaking rides and high scores.

Makana Pang, 17, won the Pipe Pro Junior for male surfers age 18 and under with long rides through surging, glistening, heavy-headed barrels. He narrowly bested his North Shore neighbor Barron Mamiya, last year’s winner, who in the quarterfinals scored a perfect 10 for a 10-foot air drop into a Backdoor tube.

In an all-Hawaii Wahine Pipe Pro final, Kauai’s Gabriela Bryan, 15, won a close duel against the North Shore’s Moana Jones, who was leading when Bryan dropped late into a barrel on a big righthander at Backdoor that eventually closed on her but gained her the top score.

How did it feel to take that risk and get crunched?

“It was a set wave, and at Pipe they are scoring on barrels, so I knew I needed to pull in,” Bryan said in a phone interview. “It wasn’t really too scary actually; the lip just clipped my head and I just fell, went over with the lip and came out through the back of the wave.”

It was a lucky exit, taking her clear of the reef, said Bryan, who didn’t place in the last two Wahine Pipe Pros and is now enjoying her breakout year after winning the Sunset Pro Junior and the Papara Pro Open.

Bryan, whose favorite Kauai spot, Pine Trees, “is a beach break with not many barrels,” has practiced her tube riding on trips to Mexico and Indonesia. She said Hawaii contests give her and other young local surfers better opportunities to catch premium waves.

“It’s a huge learning experience, the Wahine Pipe Pro,” she said. “It’s usually really crowded at Pipe, and I don’t get to take the bigger waves out at the peak, so being able to be out there in pretty good-size waves with only three girls was pretty cool.”

WHILE OTHER surfers have been celebrating Suis as a grom-free zone, I have to admit I’ve kinda missed them.

Not the rude groms with heavy-lidded eyes, old before their time, who paddle in front of or shoulder me aside, but the exuberant kids with their inadvertent acrobatics. I find myself feeling nostalgic for their water flea circus and spider monkey aerials on long, frothy spring days.

We’ll see how I feel when the Country lies flat and the groms swarm back.

“In the Lineup” features Hawaii’s oceangoers and their regular hangouts, from the beach to the deep blue sea. Reach Mindy Pennybacker at mpennybacker@staradvertiser.com or call 529-4772.