Yesterday Oakley and SurferMag came to town to throw the North East qualifying event. Held at Casino Pier, the event attracted eight shop teams from the region including top finishers, Heritage, Seventh Street, and Inlet-Outlet.

Conditions were looking pretty dismal first thing in the morning. The small surf wasn’t even showing up on the wave cams before I left my house to make the northernly trek up to Seaside with my teammates, Jamie Moran, Zach Humphreys, and Ian Bloch. It was no different story when we arrived to the beach for registration, but, the event, and it’s coordinators, had an optimistic plan and a little luck because for the three hours they needed to run the tide was incoming and the consistently pulsing 1-2ft ground swell was at it’s most manageable.

There are two rounds in this event. The first is a round of eight teams, two, one hour, heats of four teams. Each team has four surfers, two shop employees and two shop pros, one team member is in the water at a time. Each competitor  can catch a maximum of three waves with only one (the best) wave score counting toward the teams final tally. Before the heats beginning the team designates a “double whammy” surfer. This surfer is picked on his scoring potential for the day and the conditions. The “whammy surfer” is also limited to three waves, but when he thinks he’s scored to the highest of his potential he lets the judges know by throwing his hands up to double the score (a 5 counts for 10, an 8.5 would be 17). Top four totals out of all eight teams make the final where teams start from zero again and battle for the qualifying position.

After edging out runner-up, team 7th Street, 29.31 to 21.59 in the final, this is the third year running that Heritage has taken home the qualifier and earned an expense paid trip to Huntington Beach for the final, September 13th.  The Surf Shop receives free advertisement in Surfer Magazine, and the team reaps benefit to a list of goodies, including wetsuits, surfboards, and an invite to the Surfer Poll Awards.

We have a consistent formula for running under the format that has only been fine tuned after each passing year, and we’re ready to take it out west again. Not to mention, there is a fire under our asses because of the mishap of not making flights in time to compete as a full team last year due to conflicting schedules and success in later rounds of the 2009 Belmar Pro (Zack Humpreys and I couldn’t make the flight scheduled too closely to the end of the comp). We are making sure everything goes as planned and we make it to the finals, team in tact, to meet some stiff competition in hope to take home the title and the $10,000 prize money! Stay tuned!

One of the bigger waves of the day!

You have to run to and from the "team box" to tag up WWF style. The clock never stops ticking..

In the box awaiting scores to drop while Ian was in the line-up.

See you in the Finals..