today was an awesome day! heard the weather was really bad the whole time i was gone, but it’s hard to believe when you wake up to a beautiful morning like today.
ala moana side was super small, almost flat. so i met Aoi at kewalo’s instead because kewalo’s always has waves. and yes, there were waves!
had another great training session with this kid. so stoked to see him progressing step by step. and taking Aoi out at kewalo’s reminds me of the first time i took Seth out there. super nervous but he charged it. and he was only 7 years old at the time.
now Seth is 18 years old. still young for a professional surfer, and still one of the youngest in the WSL triple crown of surfing. i watched his heat online this afternoon. here he is getting ready to battle with the worlds best.
any normal kid would be so nervous, but never Seth. look at him smiling right before his heat. it’s so funny to see photos of this kid because i see a lot of me when i was a kid. we had the exact same body features and some facial features. haha.
Seth went out and gave it his all. he scored the highest wave of the heat. the bottom turn is the most important turn in surfing. this is where you commit. and if you commit like this, you can do anything.
love the hand dragging in the water. pure style.
the waves were a big 8-10′ hawaiian scale, but Seth was surfing it like how he surfs kewalos.
then here is his final wave. all he had to do was go around this barrel and he would have gotten the score to advance.
but like i said, Seth doesn’t hold back. if there is a barrel, he will pull into it.
this is about the biggest sunset beach will ever barrel. and as he was trying to come out, i was screaming!
then the curtain falls. the thick lip lands and explodes right on Seth’s head. BOOM!!! a normal person would die. but this kid got right back up and paddled back out. it was freaking amazing! he came up short to advance, but Seth surely put his name in the books of “survivor.”
and right when the lip came down on Seth’s head, Tony, Tammy, and Josh were speechless. and if you think these facial expressions were bad, you should have seen mine!!! omg, it was the freakiest, but happiest moment for me. i’m so proud of this kid. and i’m also happy he’s still alive.
