My first ESA competition was in Virginia Beach.

My first heat included Bobby Chenman and Holland at 1st jetty. They paddled so fast and snagged so many waves that I could only get the small and less significant rides. Back then you had to catch 3 waves in 15 minutes. I was lucky to get even one.

At the end of the contest the announcer Jeff Mosley from Georgia said lets give a big round of applause for Magilla Schaus from Buffalo and the Great Lakes who drove all the way down here to Virginia Beach to compete in our contest. I was dead last but they invited me to come up to the announcers stand and hang out and talk story. In a while I felt better and remembered how once in high school I had to sit on the bench for most of the swimming team season because the guys on the team had more experience and were better swimmers than me. What did I do? I started swimming my brains out and doing push ups constantly. Eventually my chance came in a qualifying race for the end of the year final competition. I made the team that year and my relay team was the best in the city. I only got there because I worked at it through constant training and by mentally seeing myself winning the race. On the day of the big swim meet I only focused on winning.

On the way home in the car from Virginia I thought of my swimming experiences and the stoke of the surfers that I met. These thoughts reminded me that one can be an unknown in the world but that all can change if one puts their mind to what ever task they want to achieve.

At 16 the football coach came down to swimming practice and asked me to try out for the football team. I told him that I was a surfer and that the Fall was the best time in Lake Erie for surf. He probably didn't belive me. My heart has always been syncronized to the rhythem of the waves. I am a surfer now at this mid age as I was when I was a kid.

We didn't have an opportunity to compete in Great Lakes surf contests when I was a kid. That has changed because I will that.

The competitions have made me a better surfer and every year when I travel down to the coast to see the groms impoving in the competitions and the parents smiling the corner of my mouth turns upward. The ESA Directors work from dawn to dusk to make a contest come together in some of the crazyiest conditions that nature throws at us. But in the ESA we find a way to get the contest completed.

Soon I will be seeing surfers faces and hearing voices that I haven't seen since last May. This ESA ritual has become part of the ebb and flow of my life that I enjoy. The surfers that were once strangers are now familiar and well known by me. I have made another team. What work I do gives other young surfers a chance to experience surfing competition and the work invested puts something back into surfing.