In recent years, the young Team Hawaii junior surf squad has featured many Kauai standouts. Peppered among the talented competitors have been names such as Malia Manuel, Tatiana Weston-Webb, Nage Melamed, Bailey Nagy, Leila Hurst, Brianna Cope, Koa Smith, Kaoli
In recent years, the young Team Hawaii junior surf squad has featured many Kauai standouts. Peppered among the talented competitors have been names such as Malia Manuel, Tatiana Weston-Webb, Nage Melamed, Bailey Nagy, Leila Hurst, Brianna Cope, Koa Smith, Kaoli Kahokuloa and Kaimana Jaquias. They’ve brought individual and team medals back to the Garden Isle, having shown their skill and aloha among the best groms in the world.
The 2015 competition has been going on over the past week in Oceanside, Calif. It has recently taken place in locales like Peru and Nicaragua and returned this year to American waters. But it can’t exactly be considered home turf for the Ambassadors of Aloha, who compete as a separate entity from Team USA.
While Kauai has been a strong piece of the recent puzzle, none of this year’s individual competitors hail from our westernmost island. This group is a mixture of youth and experience, as is the case each year as some essentially “graduate” and others take the reins as the elder statesmen.
Perhaps the most prominent surfer in the entire event, boy or girl, is Mahina Maeda. She is a two-time champion in the Girls Under 16 division and is going after a third straight gold medal, now eyeing her first in the Girls Under 18 bracket. Maeda is becoming even more of a known commodity around the globe, making her World Championship Tour debut last year at Lower Trestles and receiving a second invitation at this year’s Fiji Women’s Pro. She also proved her guts with a tow-in ride at Nazare, Portugal, which earned her a Ride of the Year nomination at the 2015 XXL Big Wave Awards.
To make the final heat, Maeda will have to survive two more repechage rounds. As a double-elimination contest, all competitors get a second life if they miss the top two in one of their four-surfer heats.
Just as Maeda is the clear team leader on the girls’ side, the boys have been captained by Seth Moniz. He’s one of the team vets and was part of the 2012 gold-medal squad. His brother, Josh, won the Boys Under 18 gold two years ago and Seth had hoped for a similar result. But his deep run ended in the seventh round of repechage heats, still providing some solid points to the team total.
The team’s best duo has been the Girls Under 16 combination of Oahu’s Brisa Hennessey and Maui’s Summer Macedo. Each survived their first four heats in the main draw without a loss, two of only four wahine to do so. It’s been a division that Hawaii has done very well in historically and could be adding to that legacy today.
Haleiwa product Barron Mamiya has also made it through five heats of the Boys Under 16 division without a loss. He’ll be the only Hawaii surfer in either boys division to be in action today.
Heading into Finals Day, the USA holds a strong lead and maintains the inside track to a team gold medal. Hawaii and France, which captured Saturday’s Aloha Cup title, are positioned well for spots on the podium with almost identical point totals behind the Americans. A team gold may be out of reach, but Hawaii should still bring some heavy hardware back from California.
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David Simon can be reached at dsimon@thegardenisland.com.
