On the sand, they grew up a tight-knit group of friends, but in the sea, they are fierce competitors fighting for their dream to be the world’s top pro surfers.
Five San Clemente surfers – four men and one woman – have qualified for the elite 2024 World Surf League Championship Tour, the major league of the sport made up of the top 36 men and 17 women competitors.
Never before in pro surfing’s 50-year history have so many surfers from the same surf town qualified for the World Tour at the same time, marking a major moment for not just San Clemente, but Southern California and mainland U.S.A.
The surfers – brothers Griffin and Crosby Colapinto, Cole Houshmand, Kade Matson and Sawyer Lindblad – are heading to Hawaii in coming weeks to prepare for the Billabong Pro Pipeline, the first stop on the WSL’s World Tour.
But before taking off to spend the year traveling the globe, the five surfers stopped on the sand under the wooden pier of their beloved hometown on a recent day to talk about what the journey means to them, how it feels to fulfill their life dream along with their best friends and what helped them get to this pivotal moment in their competitive careers.
Perhaps the best person to shed light on their younger years is Mitch Colapinto, father of Griffin and Crosby, who watched all the surfers compete against each other – and form strong friendships – when they were elementary-age kids.
The rule for his two sons, which reverberated with the rest of them: If you lose and are knocked out of the contest, always stick around to support your friends.
“A lot of parents would get upset, storm off the beach, or the kids would storm off the beach,” Mitch Colapinto said. “You have to stay, you have to support your friends. Some of our best times were staying and cheering on our friends. We made so many great friends in the surf community, it became part of our culture.”
What kind of fatherly advice does Colapinto, a teacher and surf…
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