By Coaches Alisa Cairns and Scott Finn
Laguna Beach High School had a great day at the Scholastic Surf Series Event #1 at 9th Street in Huntington Beach.
For this event LBHS had a bye in team competition so we went straight into the individual competition where we dominated each division final.
We had a mostly new young team participating and everyone really did an outstanding job. Some of the kids were doing double duty, especially Jameson Roller surfed all three divisions and killed it. He finished 1st in boys longboard, 2nd in bodyboard and he surfed well in shortboard.
Jackson Jenkins had a huge day making the finals in both longboard and shortboard. He finished 2nd in longboard and 5th in shortboard.
The surf was pumping all day and the weather was really nice too. We had five out of the six boys shortboard finalists, with each of the boys having some really nice rides in the finals. When the final scores were tallied Luke Hagopian finished in 2nd, Lucas Jablon edged out Ryan McGee to finish 3rd and 4th respectively, while Jackson and Sam Starr rounded out the final in 5th and 6th.
Our girls held their own in the large surf and came out on top with Kelly Smith winning the shortboard and Maya Takabayashi winning the longboard.
Last Thursday saw Laguna take on Dana Hills in a league event at Salt Creek. The surf was good and our surfers came out of the gates firing.
Kiko Nelsen and Trey Lockhart went 1 and 2, while a few heats later Travis Booth and Sam Nelsen took 2nd and 3rd. Liam McCue surfed really well to finish with a win while Jake Levine took 4th.
Other standouts in shortboard were Jeremy Shutts taking a 1st and Luca Elghanayan looking really solid to take a 3rd.
Our Girls were strong as usual with Kayla Coscino leading the way in shortboard, snagging some excellent rides to take the win, while also taking a 3rd in Longboard. Kalohe Danbara and Kelly Smith also looked good in shortboard taking 3rd and 4th. Claire Kelly was a big standout on a couple of waves in longboard to take 2nd. Travis Booth also took a 3rd in bodyboard and Jameson had a 4th in longboard. For awhile we were looking good for the overall win, but things started to change toward the end and we were edged out by eight points with an overall score of 88 / 80.
The next Scholastic Surf Series event will be Jan. 6 at San Clemente Pier.
Thank you to all the parents, friends and principal Jason Allemann coming down to cheer on the team.
