Samo surf team barrels into 2017

While most students are enjoying their beauty sleep on late-start Wednesdays and Saturday mornings, the surfers of the Samo Surf Team are waking up bright and early, throwing on a wetsuit and jumping in the ocean to catch some waves. This year, some of the members on the team began competing in the South Bay Scholastic Surf Association (SBSSA) contests, after breaking off from the Scholastic Surf Series (SSS) last year. Dante Gaudet (’17), Samo surf team member, has had an outstanding experience with competing—usually placing in the top three in his heats. “It’s been really fun because it’s my senior year, and because of the SBSSA, I’ve gotten more competition personally and it’s been a great experience,” Gaudet said. “There’s still a lot of room for growth and the freshmen definitely have a lot of potential for growing into the competitive spirit, so I’m excited to see what happens.”The SBSSA competitions are more team-based, rather than ranking an individual surfer for their performance alone. They usually happen about once a month and consist of three male shortboard heats, one male longboard heat, one female shortboard heat, one female longboard heat and one bodyboarding heat. However, the SBSSA allows the team to sub females into the male heats, which the SSS did not allow in previous years.“I think the biggest goal is to perform well against the other schools in the contests,” Gaudet said. “We’re surfing mostly against El Segundo, San Pedro and Redondo. But Mira Costa’s in there, Palos Verdes is in there and a bunch of them, so it’s a lot more competitive. But it’s also just a good avenue for connections too because I got to meet a lot more cool people, and I get to surf with people that I would’ve never been able to surf with before.”The Samo surfers’ weekends also include surfing in the contests that Surf Academy puts on. Coach Marion Clark, organizes the events herself, from making the heats to handcrafting the prizes for the winners who place in the finals. Although it started to rain towards the end of the most recent competition on March 5, everyone who participated had a big smile on their face when they came out of the water.Sophomore captain Tess Goddard (’19) came in second place for both the girls longboard and shortboard divisions. Goddard just started shortboarding this year, and her immediate goal is to master bottom turns and cutbacks. Plus, with her new leadership position, she holds more of a responsibility at practices.“I’m expected to show up to everything and be informed so people know they can ask me questions about what’s going on,” Goddard said. “Marion sends out texts to me with the info for the week every Tuesday.”Even though most of her friends are no longer involved with the surf team, she likes that she gets to go out in the ocean regularly to surf and it’s given her the opportunity to expand her horizons. “This year has been a lot different than the previous ones because the friends that I used to do it with aren’t really on the team anymore except one, so I’ve had to make new friends,” Goddard said. “But I really like how surf team makes me get out in the water on a regular basis, even if I think I’m super busy or I don’t think the waves are that great. I really love the ocean and always have, so I’d say that’s my main motivation in surfing.”Ben Pritikin (’18), junior captain of the surf team, said being on the surf team has been a ton of fun this year. Pritikin has developed methods for surfing in competitions, as well as for reaching his own goals.“To prepare for a competition, I usually go to the place where the competition will be the day before to get used to that wave,” Pritikin said. “My goals are usually something along the lines of a maneuver. For now it’s improving my cross-stepping. Whenever I’m faced with an obstacle, I like to take a step back and rethink my approach.”Peter Husting (’16), a Surf Academy coach and Samo graduate, aims to help the surfers reach their individual goals—whether it is landing a new trick or just doing better overall in competitions.“My goal is to help them get to their goals in any way that I can and build on that determination that they already have as a motivator, but also as someone that can help them to progress in surfing technique and respect for the sport,” Husting said.Although Husting primarily coaches the Lincoln Middle School team, he has worked with the Samo surfers in the past, and receives updates on how they’re doing from Clark. He noted that the surfers are very dedicated, determined and stoked at practice.Their practices typically begin with a land workout, which often includes push-ups, sit-ups and other various exercises. “We’ve had a very stormy winter even though the waves were good,” Husting said. “So since it rained so much, we didn’t have as much water time as we usually would. There will always be surfing, and most of the practice will be surfing, but depending on conditions we can do relay races, paddle-outs, swims or pre-surfing heats in preparation for upcoming contests.”Some of the surfers have been driving to surf spots other than Santa Monica for practice—including El Porto, Hermosa and Huntington beach.“This year we’ve started to travel on Saturdays,” Gaudet said. “So that’s been awesome because we’ve been getting good waves actually and I’ve seen improvement in that for sure. It’s a pretty fun group of people in and out of the water. We’ll usually all go get food after and it’s always a good time.”If there are waves in the ocean, there are sure to be members of the surf team out in the lineup, surfing and having fun together.“What motivates me to get up every morning is probably the sunrise, being in nature, just the way I feel after I get out of the ocean,” Gaudet said. “And when there’s good waves, that trumps everything else, that’s just the best thing. I get to do what I love.”