Kolohe Andino emerges triumphant in 2011 Quiksilver USA Surfing Championship
The up-and-rising Californian surfer, Kolohe “brother” Andino, added yet another achievement to his name by winning the 2011 Quiksilver USA Surfing Championship Under-18 Boys final that went down on Saturday, June 25th, at the Lower Trestles.
The win earned the 17-year-old San Clemente-based surfer his sixth U.S title in the last five years. He also got to take home the Governor’s Cup, awarded to him by the California state parks for being one of the two premier performers during the five-day
competition.
Lower Trestles is renowned for offering some of the best waves in the world. That is exactly what the surfers got when they boarded their boards on the final day of the 2011 US Championship.
After surviving the first three rounds, as well as the semi-final, Andino made his way into the finals to face Maui’s Ian Gentil, Costa Mesa’s Colin Moran and Huntington Beach’s Derek Peters in a four-way battle for the title. While the remarkable performances
by the other three finalists could not be ignored, Andino was without any doubt the favourite to win the contest due to his outstanding form and consistency.
As the final started, the young gun asserted his dominance in the battle without losing any time. He caught a wave to score 8.67 points off it and gain the lead. However, Gentil responded quite well by collecting 7.67 points off his first wave to narrow
the gap.
Andino soon posted an 8.60 to his account to further increase the lead over his closest rival. Gentil required a 9.60 off his second wave to overtake him, a task that seemed unlikely to be accomplished. However, Andino decided to go for an aerial on a wave
in the final moments of the 25-minute heat. The string of spectacular manoeuvres earned him a unanimous perfect 10 from all of the judges, sealing the fate of the contest.
Talking to the media after the heat, Andino said, “I was satisfied with that. At the end I was just looking for one wave where I could do a big air or something like that.”
He further said that he had been inspired by the performances of the groms who had been going really hard in the big Trestle waves. That is what caused him to really go overboard during the heat and attempt aerials and the other extravagant manoeuvres in
his arsenal.
“All those 12-and-under and those 14-and-under kids, they were like psyching me up super-hard,” he said on the winners' podium. “They were just flaring.”
While Gentil finished in runner-up place, Moran and Peters rounded out the bottom two positions. They all seemed helpless in front of their opponent’s rampage.
Andino has been in the spotlight for quite a while now and is definitely one of the few Californian surfers that are expected to make waves in the sport and retrieve the glory that California last lost to the Australian and Hawaiian surfers over the last
two decades.
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