I said this in Unsalted:
"Back then, it was if you showed up at a break with a surfboard in your hand... you were one of us...
you weren’t a football player, you weren’t a basketball player...you weren’t anywhere involved with anything that had to do with organized sport...
You were a surfer, and you were one of us."
Yes that was the truth back then as it is now. But we founding members of the Wyldewood Surf Club also constantly talked about holding surfing competitions in our golden days of our youth. I swam competitively in high school and John and Darcy O'Hear competed in down hill skiing. All we heard back then and today in our local media was about football, baseball, golf, and now hockey. Back then as today we wanted competitive surfing contests on the lakes. The Unsalted movie didn't have these thoughts in it but they are true today as when we surfed with over twenty or more surfers in the summer waves of Lake Erie in the sixties.
In the sixties we were glued to the television watching ABC's Wide World of Sports broadcast of the Duke Invitational on the North Shore.
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http://www.hawaiianswimboat.com/duke8.html"
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http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g1epc/is_tov/ai_2419101318"
It helped us get us through a lot of frozen lake years and when we had no wheels to the beach. It was like a port hole to the world of big waves and big wave surf contests.
The Hawaiians have been staging surf competitions for thousands of years. The greatest Hawaiian, olympic swimmer and surfer brought surfing to the entire planet and it was his constant lobbying to bring surf competition into the olympic games. I believe that the Duke sponsored surf competitions to further prepare surfing and surfers to someday be a part of the olympic games. That beginning of surfing competitions has evolved and will someday come to pass. I don't hear a lament from snowboarding being in the olympics.
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http://www.dukefoundation.org/"
At a Wyldewood Surf Club meeting in 1970 John O'Hear was trying to organize a Wyldewood Surf Competition but we had no money to do this and than shortly after that O'Hear went off to college.
It was years later that I started to hold surf contests at Wyldewood and had no idea about the excellent amateur surfing organization called the Eastern Surfing Association. It was Lester Priday who offered me his spot as ESA Co-Director of the Great Lakes District. The ESA Great Lakes District has been holding surf competitions in the Great Lakes for years. I never met Oscar Wolfbrandt but heard how he traveled across the lakes and was first in organizing ESA Great Lakes surf contests.
In my opinion if you show up to a beach that I'm surfing at you are a cut above the rest of the people in this area who live vicariously on the couch, in the stands, or behind a computer screen like a serf instead of a surfer.
If you show up at a beach where I'm running an amateur surfing competition to compete than you too are a distinguished surfer. To win one must lose and to learn to deal with that takes guts. The people who take loss and turn it into an opportunity instead of a defeat are people who work hard.
There is nothing wrong with taking part in an amateur surfing contest on the Great Lakes and this opportunity will live onward till I can no longer contribute my part to my community and than someone else will step up and continue this work.
To continue to try and improve is always a worth while endeavour.
Props always to the Duke Kahannamoku, Tom Blake, Bob Simmons, Rell Sunn:
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http://www.rellsunn.com/index2.htm"
Shaun Tomson,
Peter Townend:
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http://www.goldcoastsport.com.au/Hall_Of_Fame/profiles/Peter_Townend.htm"
Peter Troy, Lester Priday, Jim Hoop, Oscar Wolfbrandt, Kathy Phillips, and Dr. Colin “Doc” Couture.
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http://www.surfresearch.com.au/0000h_contests.html"
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http://www.surfesa.org"
I try.
