Jr. Pro Surf Contest Ends On a High Note

A week's worth of subpar waves did little to dampen Long Beach's enthusiasm for the Nike 6.0 Unsound Junior Pro Surfing Tournament. In the end, there was plenty of excitement to make up for the relatively quiet event — featuring several dozen of the nation's best young men and women surfers to compete for $20,0000 in prize money — that was staged at National Boulevard beach from Sept. 8 to 12.

Long Beach native and crowd favorite Balaram Stack won the men's competition in dramatic fashion Saturday afternoon. Stack was trailing with only three minutes left in the final heat of the men's bracket when he caught a game-changing wave to take the lead from Mike Dunphy of Virginia Beach.

"It was sick to see an entire Long Beach crowd at the edge of the surf rooting Balaram on," said Jack Fleming, producer for Aura360, the company that organized the tourney. "Dunphy had less than a minute and all he needed was a mediocre wave to win. The wave came up and then disappeared. It didn't happen. Balaram won. It was wild."

While the junior heats held on Wednesday were also exciting and featured decent-sized waves, Thursday and Friday offered no swells for the surfers to compete. The irrepressible Fleming, who coordinated the efforts of Nike, Long Beach's Unsound Surf Shop and Red Bull to pull the event together, was excited to see the tournament end on a high note.

"It's definitely a hate/love relationship," Fleming said of all the work involved. "We purposely block out several days to deal with less than perfect conditions. But to bring in these great surfers and see them have a great time? That leaves me psyched."

One local who did not hit the high note this week was T.J. Gumiela. Like Stack, Gumiela is a Long Beach surfing prodigy, but he came up short on Wednesday in the junior heat, placing third behind Stack and 16-year-old Kolohe Andino from San Clemente, California.

"The waves got really small," Gumiela said. "But if you have talent, you can make something happen. I got one good wave in my heat. I just didn't have a back-up."

Quincy Davis did. The 15-year-old from Montauk won the women's heat on Saturday, and she seemed to know that the sparse opportunities the ocean offered had to be seized. She did so in spectacular fashion, catching more waves than her competition and riding them above and beyond the rest of the pack.

"Things seem to get better as the heats went along," Davis said. "I got lucky."

Fleming also feels lucky. While the effort of putting together a week-long tournament can be exhausting, having his friends, wife, daughter Sienna, and other family around him on a perfect Indian summer Saturday seemed to make for the perfect life – and lifestyle.

"Ultimately, I'm not stuck in a cubicle," Fleming said with a laugh. "That's why I do it."