Quiksilver Is About To Turn A Kid Into A King (And Give Them $10k)
What to know about the 2026 Quiksilver King Of The Groms final on the North Shore.
Ehukai Beach Park has been small, brown-ish, and kinda fun the last two days.
And, if you looked close enough, you may have noticed four more hungry mouths occupying that small stretch of coastline (can we be done with the 7-mile thing?) where appetites never die. Quiksilver’s King Of The Groms final is about to run, though it will look nothing like a traditional surf contest.
How did we get here?
Late last year, Quik (with a bit of help from their friends at Stab) dared any U18 surfer to post their best single wave clip. Griffin Colapinto and Kauli Vaast sliced 120 entries down into a top 8. The top 8 went through two rounds of voting on IG, which left two surfers — Brody Mulik and Dylan Donegan — standing. Then, Griff and Kauli tapped two fallen soldiers from their initial top 8 — Kash Brown and Mananalu Chandler — to round out the final, because can you really trust IG voting for everything?
We shall see. Because Brody, Dylan, Kash, and Mana are here now. And, by Saturday, one of them will have the KOTG crown, as well as a cheeky $10k.
If they picked the correct color on the roulette wheel seven consecutive times while letting that money ride, it would grow to more than a million. If they invested it with a compounding 6% annual return, it would be worth about $100k by the time they hit 60. If they exchanged it for an automobile, it would grant them the keys to a late-2010s Nissan Sentra.
Decisions, decisions. But how are they gonna win that 10k anyway?
Hughie Vaughan, Griffin Colapinto, and Reef McIntosh are also on site. They’ll be judging. But there won’t be heats. Or jerseys. Or scores. Or priority. There will only be surfing.
On that panel, you’ve got the guy who landed the best air ever. And a guy who would surprise no one if he won the 2026 World Title. And a guy who has spent decades handling what would seem to be the impossible task of making his 6’4” frame look like a hotdog in the hallway of a freight training right. Could you really argue with whoever they say did the most with a week on the North Shore?
This thing wraps the 28th, and an edit will go live within a week. Keep an eye on Stab and Quik’s channels to get a taste of what’s going down.
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