2024 Stab Surfer Of The Year MYC (Mid-Year Check-in)

A month ago we sent out this article to our Premium members and asked for your mid-year Stab Surfer of the Year (SSOTY) votes. We then tallied them all up and put them in order of Top Five. See where your opinions fall below.

In 2019, Soli Bailey had his first and only season on the CT — he finished 30th.

Like so many of us are forced to do in our twenties, Soli had to make a decision: Do I keep hacking away at the dream gig, or do I settle into a comfy, practical, normal life?

Soli chose neither option. Instead, he pivoted, earning his bread not by four-to-the-shore-ing, but by exploiting his true forte: Big Fucking Barrels.

Now, off stand-out performances at Shipstern Bluff and Fiji, plus a history-making cone festival on Surfline’s Maps to Nowhere trip, Soli is the name that came up most often when we asked past SSOTY winners for their Best Male Surfer so far this year. And our Premium audience is also a bunch of Soliphiles as well, giving Bailey the #2 spot behind a usual suspect you’ll see below.

There are still five months months left in the year, and with Soli’s Stab Edit of the Year (SEOTY) entry dropping on Stab Premium next month, Mr. Bailey’s candidacy for top dawg is looking very strong. “I haven’t seen Soli’s new edit Conehead yet,” former SEOTY winner Russell Bierke told us, “but from the year he’s had it’ll be hard to top.”

Spoiler: we have seen the edit, and it is somehow better than we’d imagined. Stay tuned for August 12th…

Of course, anything can happen between now and New Years. The whole reason we’ve done this mid-year check-in is to avoid forgetting what has happened so far this year and avoid the recency bias that comes with “Oscar-baiting”, or the tendency for filmmakers to drop their best stuff right before award season. In our poll we sent out to our Premium audience, many of you said something along the lines of, “…uhhh I honesty don’t remember much that’s happened this year.” That’s why we’re doing this.

So, refer back to this Mid-year Check-in (MYC) when it’s time to cast your vote for 2024’s SSOTY in December. But, don’t let it sway you too much. A lot can happen in five months.

The Pros — Previous SSOTY Winners’ Poll (the answers were so unanimous we are only putting Top Two here):

Best Male:

1. Soli Bailey
2. John John Florence

Best Female:

1. Caity Simmers
2. Sierra Kerr

Best Male Junior:

1. Dane Henry
2. Lucas Cassity

Best Female Junior:

1. Sierra Kerr
2. Erin Brooks

Edit of the Year:

1. Hughie Vaughan’s “Nibbler”
2. That episode of Maps To Nowhere (doesn’t technically qualify for SEOTY, but it was mentioned enough that we’re putting it here)

Film of the Year:

1. Motel Hell
2. Zipper

Best YouTube:

1. Nathan Florence
2. Mason Ho

You, our Stab Premium audience (the answers here were more diverse, so we’re doing Top Five):

Best Male:

1. John John Florence
2. Soli Bailey
3. Harry Bryant
4. Nathan Florence
5. Tied between Yago Dora and Eithan Osborne

Best Female:

1. Caity Simmers
2. Molly Picklum
3. Sierra Kerr
4. Coco Ho
5. Jaleesa Vincent

Best Female Junior:

1. Sierra Kerr
2. Erin Brooks
3. Patti Zhou
4. Kiara Goold
5. Eden Walla

Best Male Junior:

1. Dane Henry
2. Ryji Masuda
3. Lucas Cassity
4. Arthur Villar
5. Max McGillivray

Stab Edit of the Year (again, this award is for Stab Edit of the Years only, but we thought we’d open it up for this six-month check-in for shits and gigs):

1. That “Maps To Nowhere” episode
2. Levi Slawson’s “Hard Reset”
3. Julian Wilson’s “Surf Rehab”
4. Mason Ho’s “Caveheart”
5. Nathan Florence’s Solomon Islands Vlog

Film of the Year:

1. Harry Bryant’s Motel Hell
2. Zipper
3. Noa Deane’s Mash
4. Tosh Tudor’s Tube Therapy
5. Sierra Kerr’s Pre-kerrsor

Best YouTube:

1. Nathan Florence and Zoard Janko
2. Mason Ho and Rory Pringle
3. Chapter 11 TV
4. Cola Bros
5. Jacob Szekely’s OTC

Takeaways:

There’s a general lack of individual “edits” dropping this year — it seems surfers are either I.V. dripping their clips on Instagram, hoarding them all away for a proper 40-minute plus film, or putting them toward brand projects to please their corporate overlords — hence the general lack of SEOTY entries in 2024. Either that, or it’s because we never managed to secure this year’s Bitcoin (blame inflation!).

But, it’s only been a little over six months, too soon to be declaring sad trends in the macroeconomic surf edit ecosystem.

Also, a couple of you were concerned that there would be some recency bias in our poll due to Stab High Japan just finishing. But, while some Stab High names slithered in there (Ryji, Eithan, Kiara, etc.) it doesn’t seem like they are monopolizing the field at all — CT results still domineer the SSOTY ballot boxes.

Let’s end our little soirée with something that Soli Bailey recently told us, prophetically, when we asked him why his year is going so well. “I don’t know. I really don’t. I feel like you just get into little moments where things click. When I was competing years ago when I qualified, I’d get in little moments. Looking at Griffin at the moment, he’s on tour and has had a crazy little run of events — or like Nathan Florence last year,” Soli said. “You just put yourself there and it pops up in your face. I’m just enjoying time in the water and chasing waves and keeping a smile and I dunno, it just keeps clicking at the moment. Hopefully it keeps happening all year. I’m enjoying it while it lasts anyway.”