By Audrey Williams
Staff Writer
The Mira Costa surf team will be competing at the National Scholastic Surfing Association Interscholastic Championships in Salt Creek Dana Point from June 13 to June 14 for the last contest of the season.
The surf team has been competing since October, unlike many other sports at Costa that compete only for a few months. As the final contest of the year, the team will be attending the NSSA Interscholastic Championships to see how they match up against the best surf teams in America.
“Before I joined surf, I didn’t do a lot of contests,” freshman Lauren Friedrich said. “I enjoy the competitions and surf team allows me to surf in them.”
After competing against multiple local schools, Mira Costa received first place as a team overall. The members of the team have improved individually which brought up the team as a whole.
“The lower level surfers pushed up from below and kept the upper level surfers on their toes,” coach Tracy Geller said. “They even took some spots.”
The team has been pushing each other with training. As part of their training, the team runs heats, mimicking the way the competitions are run as well as doing crossfit training.
“It pushes me when we run heats,” sophomore Amelie Vergnolle said. “It sets up a competition atmosphere and that’s a good way for us to train.”
In the beginning of the year, there are tryouts to see who will make the team and who will just be in Surf P.E. During those tryouts, students can choose whether or not they want to try out for short board, long board or both. All of the girls made both and some of the boys.
“I longboard at the majority of contests,” Vergnolle said. “I didn’t do any of the school contests for short boarding throughout the year but I have been short boarding a lot more over the past months.”
The team is moving onto nationals after its state competition. Sophomores Cody Purcell, Matt Hodges, Pat Komick, Andrew Neal, and Chad Coons as well as seniors Tommy Dietz and Sara Kohrogi all competed at States.
“I personally didn’t do well at States,” Hodges said. “Some of my teammates did really well so overall as a team I would say it was a successful contest.”
Kohrogi, Vergnolle, Dietz, Purcell, Hodges, Douglas Golubovic, Coons, Andrew Vandermark and Neal will be competing at Nationals. All are competing in short board except for Neal who is competing in the longboarding division.
“Overall, I think nationals will go well,” Kohrogi said. “I hope to get better than fifth because that’s what I’ve gotten the past two years.”
At Nationals, Costa will be competing against all the top surfers from schools from Florida, New Jersey, Hawaii, Northern California, San Diego, Orange County, Huntington, Newport, Edison and San Clemente.
“The level of surfing is going to be far superior to anything I’ve ever experienced,” Vergnolle said. “Sara Kohrogi has been trying to help me prepare by having me surf with her. I am pretty nervous but excited at the same time.”
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