Caldwell hopes to revamp surf contest application process

Following a recent dust-up with the World Surf League over tournament dates on the North Shore, Mayor Kirk Caldwell wants to create an advisory committee to rewrite Parks and Recreation Department surf tournament rules all across Oahu by August and in time for the 2019-2020 season.

Caldwell said Wednesday that it will be up to the advisory committee to throw out dozens of pages of application process rules and write new ones that would determine who gets the right to run surf tournaments all across the island, and specifically on the North Shore.

“Take the rules, rip ’em up, throw ’em away and start again with whole cloth,” Caldwell said. “Don’t go tweak around the edges.”

But Caldwell said he hopes the new rules lead to more tournament opportunities for younger, local surfers — especially females — who have to come up with thousands of dollars to travel to meets outside Hawaii to qualify for North Shore tournaments such as the Pipeline Masters.

“They gotta go there to win an event so they get ranked so they can go to the next level so they can go to the Pipeline Masters,” Caldwell said. “I’m trying to figure out, how do we give more chance to those local kids who are really some of the best in the world but don’t get ranked because they can’t afford to leave Hawaii?”

The committee might even come up with ways to help local surfers afford the costs to travel to meets around the world to qualify for the Pipeline Masters, Caldwell suggested.

Caldwell’s call to revamp the city’s surf tournament application process follows a contentious few weeks in which WSL Chief Executive Officer Sophie Goldschmidt threatened to pull all of the league’s Hawaii-based surf meets if the city did not agree to change WSL’s dates for two of its events on the 2018-2019 North Shore surfing calendar.

Instead of ending its 2018 season with the Pipeline Masters in December, WSL officials wanted to drop their Volcom Pipe Pro 2019 tournament in late January and replace it with a second Pipeline Masters tournament that would begin the season.

WSL officials did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

In his Honolulu Hale office Wednesday, Caldwell stood next to an oversized display of this season’s North Shore tournament schedule, which runs from September through March 2019. Out of 15 tournaments, the schedule showed that the World Surf League has won the right to hold six of them, including the Pipeline Masters, which attracts 8,000 visitors and bumper-to-bumper traffic.

The schedule was sent to all the applicants on Tuesday, Caldwell said, and they have 10 days to appeal.

Caldwell specifically addressed WSL officials and said:

“So my request is: Cool heads. Let’s talk about what we can do moving forward. We’ve heard your concerns and we’d like to see what we can do to make it better in the future. But let’s not hurt folks in the short term. … Hawaii is the birthplace of surfing. … We’re proud of that and it continues to be the legacy for this place and we want to make sure it’s healthy and successful for the long term.”

He openly questioned some of the current restrictions on North Shore surf tournaments, such as the rule requiring no more than 64 days of competition in all — and no more than 16 competitive days for individual beach parks.

“We picked 16 days somehow,” Caldwell said. “Someone decided 16 days was the right amount and 64 competitive days for the North Shore. Why is 64 the magic number?”

The pressures on the North Shore also are being felt in places like Waikiki, Caldwell said.

“I’m hearing when I met with the surf community that Waikiki is becoming more like the North Shore during their summer months,” Caldwell said. “Local guys who just want to go surf at Queen’s can’t, because there’s event after event and they’re overlapping.”

Caldwell has asked a well-known surfer to lead the group, whom he declined to identify because he or she has yet to accept.

“It’s a senior member of the surfing community that you all know and probably love,” Caldwell told reporters.