LIHU‘E — Two rounds of qualifying and one round of repechage action are complete at the World Junior Surfing Championships in Peru, as the Hawai‘i team has been carving up the two- to four-foot faces and advancing through most heats
LIHU‘E — Two rounds of qualifying and one round of repechage action are complete at the World Junior Surfing Championships in Peru, as the Hawai‘i team has been carving up the two- to four-foot faces and advancing through most heats to this point.
The Quiksilver International Surfing Association’s 2011 event, the biggest junior surf competition in the world, heads into its fourth day this morning in Punta Hermosa.
Scheduled today are all repechage heats featuring all three divisions — Boys Under 18, Boys Under 16 and Girls Under 18.
Three teams — Hawai‘i, Brazil and the USA — have nine surfers still in the main event. Australia and South Africa have eight, while Tahiti, France and Peru each have seven.
Still in the main draw for the Boys Under 18 are Hawai‘i’s Ezekiel Lau, Kaimana Jaquias and Keanu Asing. Jaquias, a returning participant with the Hawai‘i team, is a Kaua‘i rider.
He won his first-round heat with a 7.50 score, topping his two opponents and moving into the second round, where he and New Zealand’s Tane Wallis each advanced with identical 7.67 scores.
Lau won his first heat handily with a 10.17 score, then followed that up with a 7.57 in the second round, good for second place.
Asing also dominated his first heat with a 13.00 score, including a 7.17 ride that is the 10th-highest scoring wave to this point in the division. His 10.76 in the second round was again good for a heat victory.
Isaiah Moniz, the fourth Hawai‘i member in the Under 18 division, won his opening heat with a 12.10 score, but then took third in the second round and will now move through the repechage bracket.
Ian Gentil and Kain Daly are into the third round of the Under 16 division, while Koa Smith and Kaoli Kahokuloa are in the repechage second round.
Gentil has back-to-back wins, with a 9.80 in the first and a 10.53 in the second round. Daly’s 8.43 in the opening round was good enough for second place, which he followed with an 8.74 in the second. That was just 0.01 points higher than Portugal’s Miguel Blanco, giving Daly the second-place finish behind teammate Gentil.
Smith put up an 11.43 in the opening round for the win, but he was then on the wrong end of the scoreboard in the second, as his 6.45 was just behind the 6.46 that France’s Andy Criere scored. An interference call on Kilauea’s Smith cost him the point total he would have otherwise earned and put him into the repechage bracket.
The same was true for Kahokuloa in the same heat, as he was also given the triangle on an interference call and ended up finishing fourth behind Smith, with a 4.36 score. He posted a 7.26 in the first round for a second-place finish.
All four Hawai‘i surfers in the Girls Under 18 competition are safely into the third round, as Mahina Maeda, Brianna Cope, Tatiana Weston-Webb and Bailey Nagy remain among the 24 in the main bracket.
Nagy scorched one ride in the second round, posting the top score of the event so far with a 9.50 Tuesday, on her way to a 15.83 heat total and victory. That was after a 12.83 in the first round for a win.
Maeda also has a pair of victories, surfing the first heat in each round, posting scores of 10.77 and 13.33 so far.
Cope, of Koloa, scored a 13.04 in the first round for an easy win, then took second place with a 9.00 in the following round.
She and Maeda will be in the water together for the first heat of the third round, along with Australia’s Ellie-Jean Coffey and South Africa’s Emma Smith.
Princeville’s Tatiana Weston-Webb won her first heat handily with a 10.77, then slammed a 15.44 in the second round with scores of 8.27 and 7.17 on her final two rides.
In the Boys U18 repechage, 16 second-round heats are scheduled for today, followed by eight third-round repechage heats. The Boys U16 will see 12 second-round repechage heats, and the Girls U18 will also have 12 second-round repechage heats.
The action can be watched live at www.isawjsc.com/category/live
They are scheduled to be back in the water at 8 a.m. local time, which is 3 a.m. Hawaiian.
