Top kneeboarders battled it out Friday, Feb. 16, at the Huntington Beach Pier in a surf event that puts a spotlight on the niche style of wave riding.
The 2024 Kneeboard Surfing USA contest not only means bragging rights and a championship title for the winners, but it is also a qualifying event for the world championships that will be held in August at the famous surf break J-Bay in South Africa.
Kneeboarding, once a popular segment of surfing in the 1980s, has a cult following. There are original enthusiasts and a younger generation picking up the sport to keep the style – for which riders use a shorter board and ride while kneeling – alive.
The championships have been hosted in Huntington Beach for about a decade, and despite being held in winter always seems to score great surf and sunny skies, said event organizer Jack Beresford.
The 50 or so surfers in Friday’s event were treated with waves in the 3- to 4-foot range.
While many of the surfers hailed from Huntington Beach and San Diego, others traveled from Northern California and the East Coast, and a few came from as far as Spain and Puerto Rico, Beresford said.
“There’s a lot of energy in the kneeboard community this year,” he said.
Beresford’s daughter, Alejandra, 20, was one of the few women competing Friday and San Juan Capistrano’s Kevin Skvarna, 25, is one of the newcomers who has made waves in the sport.
Skvama grew up shortboarding and has earned several longboard titles through the years. His skills spilled over to kneeboarding and he did well enough to make it to the World Championships in Portugal in 2022, where he took third place in the men’s open division and first in his age bracket.
“For me, it’s all about the perspective,” Skvama said. “It allows you to fit in tight pockets of the wave. It’s a different feeling I was looking for that I wasn’t getting from longboarding or shortboarding. You feel like you’re going really fast, you can fit yourself…
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