Two weekends ago, I had a surf contest at Salt Creek in Orange County…
The waves were really fun and the winner of the contest got a FREE TRIP TO AUSTRALIA and $500.00 It was called the Rip Curl Grom Search, where they search the country for the top 16 and under surfer in America, including Puerto Rico, Barbados, and other places from that area of the world. That being said I really wanted to win!
I made the finals which consists of four girls and 25 minutes (CLICK HERE TO VIEW VIDEO HIGHLIGHT REEL OF FINALS FROM SURFLINE). There was a girl from Hawaii, Malibu, Barbados and me Santa Barbara. The girl from Hawaii was a finalist from NSSA Nationals with me, so she was good. She is a year older than me and this was her last year to compete in this, so she was hungry to win.
HALEIWA, HI - The first event of the Van Triple Crown is underway. San Clemente's Tanner Gudauskas (pictured) advanced through to the next round of the REEF Hawaiian Pro in his quest to qualify for next year's WCT Tour. (Photo by Kelly Cestari/ASP/CI via Getty Images)
I caught 11 waves. I got a high-8 and a 6 out of a possible 10 for my best scores. They only score your two highest waves. The other girl had to go in because you can only catch a total of 12 waves and she had done that with a minute to go. I was in the lead so they announced that I had won because she was already done.
They interviewed me as the winner on the live web cam. Stephanie Gilmore was announcing for Rip Curl and she was so nice and told me she’d see me in Australia! I was super excited. Then all the sudden there was all this confusion and they said it had been scored incorrectly somehow, and that the girl from Hawaii had actually won by .16 of a point. It was disappointing, but that is life and I was happy for my friend from Hawaii because it was her last year to win this competition and I am younger and have another chance.
Earlier that week, I was filmed with Fuel TV for one of there shows called “New Pollution“. The show basically is about all of the under 16 up and comers in extreme sports. They came for four days and filmed me doing just about everything you can think of! I surfed for the first two days at Silver Strand, C Street and Rincon. The waves were pretty fun.
The last two days I did an interview with the host, made egg McMuffins at McDonald’s, and had an extreme ping pong tournament (loser had to kiss our St. Bernard on the mouth, lots of drool!)
We also did tricks on my trikes. A trike is a motorized scooter that goes 20 mph and you weave back and forth like skiing. It’s super fun. It might not sound like that much stuff, but trust me it was! However, I had a blast!! Overall, I had so much fun doing it and can’t wait for it to come out!
