A Quik Young Gun Was Supposed To Win $10k Today

You could sense it. Early this morning, with a swell hidden in darkness but made very apparent via thunder cracks in the eardrum and trembles shaking through the ground, the Young Guns gathered and ate cereal and didn’t make eye contact. There was tension. But there was also Instagram. No telling which of the two was to blame.

After a final scroll, it was onto the bus and into the jungle.

First stop: the beachbreak. First thought: too grumpy. Plenty of swell, but it wasn’t quite articulating itself. So, back onto the bus. Deeper into the jungle. Don’t stop until a wave that makes you scream. Soon enough, we did.

It was a left that looked either like Cloudbreak or heaven depending on your financial status and religious affiliations. No time was wasted in calling the comp on.

There are no superlatives to appropriately describe the next few hours of surfing. There are, however, photographs. Scroll through them above. It’s OK to dream.

As the results were being tabulated to see which four surfers were heading to the hour-long jam session final for $10K, a set perked up. It swung wide and went soft, instead of hugging the reef and tunnelling down the line like the rest. We watched. We waited. And with a dropping tide, we decided to hold off on the final — you can’t end an event like this on anything but a high note.

So, tomorrow’s another day, swell’s holding, and it’ll be one to remember for finalists Kale Walsh, Sammy Pupo, Kyuss King and Kade Matson.