The five members of Kapaʻa High School boys surfing team took home the runner-up trophy on Saturday, finishing behind Oahʻu’s Kahuku High School at the inaugural Hawaiʻi state surfing championship at Hoʻokipa Beach Park on the north shore of Maui.
The team from Kauaʻi was led by Hayden Flores, who finished second in the boys shortboard final that featured 41 athletes from around the state.
Teammates Kaʻeo Frye and Kia Kaha Kinimaka Lopez both won their first heats to make it to the quarterfinals of the shortboard contest, but did not advance to the semifinals. Also on the Kapaʻa team is Courgar Carlson and Rayden Corpuz.
About 135 kids fairly evenly divided between girls and boys from 55 schools around Hawaiʻi qualified for the two-day state meet held on Friday and Saturday. Each gender competed in three events — shortboard, longboard and bodyboard.
Felix Barton, a senior at the Hawaiʻi Academy of Arts and Science, wowed the crowd with maneuvers that won him the boys bodyboarding state high school title. About an hour later, Alex Ranne, his teammate at the public charter school in Pāhoa on the Big Island, won the boys longboard state title.
The competition was shown live on Spectrum OC16 Sports with Ed the Dread Hayden doing the public address announcing.
Hayden, who watched all the action from his perch in a shady pavilion above the beach, said the ride of the meet went to Barton, who recorded a competition high 9.67 on his first wave in the final heat.
“That’s the trick, straight out of P-town,” said Pono Hirakami, coach at the Big Island academy. “The best scores are the ones that are going to be doing the flips. He went over and up above the lip, full view of the crowd. He did an air roll spin, ARS, on the left. So sick.
“And then he took the next one and did a reverse, which is like a 360, but above the water. Boom! So sick.”
During a semifinal heat of the bodyboarders, Hirakami was coaching from the bluffs above the break. He said that his dad had been the principal at the academy and recently passed.
“So Felix said out there, he felt like yesterday my dad was sending him some waves,” Hirakami said. “My dad used to say, ‘if you see one honu (turtle), go and sit by him. And right before his biggest score, he saw the honu, sat right by it, and the wave came right to him, and he got the best score of the day.”
Hirakami said Barton, who is from Kalapana, also was the first bodyboarder to get the first perfect score of 10 in a Big Island high school official meet.
But just finding a place to surf has not been easy for Barton, who said the eruption of Kīlauea in 2018 led to “lava taking out our home beach of Pohoiki, so we had to travel quite a ways to go surf.”
Ranne said for his final, it was a really slow heat.
“There was only a few sets, and back home on my home break, Honoliʻi (in Hilo), it has a lack of waves,” he said. “So even though it was small, I felt like I was in my element with the small waves.”
Ranne posted scores of 7.93 and 6.33 for 14.26 points to beat runner-up Micah Ah You of Kahuku High School on Oʻahu.
It took a decades-long effort led by Kim Ball on Maui to get surfing to become an official high school sport in Hawaiʻi, despite the state being the birthplace of modern surfing.
Ballʻs effort began before Barton or Ranne were born.
“Well, we had our first high school club meet at Ho’okipa in 1995,” Ball said on Thursday during setup of the two-day event. “We rallied the troops: teachers, parents, students, surf industry people. We went to multiple state school board meetings, pleading our case.”
And it has been Ball who has been the driving force to make it a reality, even after his house burned down in the Lahaina fire of 2023 and Mayor Richard Bissen tapped him to serve on an advisory recovery team.
While it seemed like a no-brainer that surfing should have always been a high school sport in Hawaiʻi, the birthplace of modern surfing, it took Ball and others to show how the challenges of ocean safety, logistics and funding could be overcome.
“They kept throwing roadblocks at us,” Ball said.
But during the 2025 State Legislature, Bill 133 sponsored by State Rep. Sean Quinlan that would make surfing an official high school sport passed. It also provided funding of $685,000 for 2025-2026 and the same amount for 2026-2027 to support its establishment.
On May 30, 2025, Gov. Josh Green signed the bill known as Act 141 into law, making Hawaiʻi the first state in the nation to have surfing as a state high school championship sport.
“It took old blood and new blood: it took a lot of people who were working on it for more than 10 years and it took people who just started two years ago,” said Christopher Chun, who has been executive director of the Hawaiʻi High School Athletic Association since 2010.
Among the new blood was Sunny Kazama, a surfer who took a gap year after graduating from ʻIolani High School on Oʻahu in 2024 to intern for Sen. Glenn Wakai. During his 90-second “Moment of Contemplation,” he let Kazama speak on the Senate Floor in support of Bill 133.
“I gave my speech, and then the bill was voted on like three or four days later and surprisingly it passed,” she said. “Itʻs never gotten as far as it did, much less passed before. It’s incredible to know I had a little helping hand in nudging it over the finish line.”
Kazama cut out on some of her classes at the University of San Diego to travel to Maui to see the state championship and help her Davin Kazama, who is the volunteer state high school coordinator for surfing.
Green said at a press conference in September that Hoʻokipa Beach Park was chosen as the inaugural championship site as a nod to Ball’s effort.
“I’m a senior this year, so I’m stoked to get one year in at least with this surf league,” Barton said. “Stoked for the future generations and stoked to set the footsteps and push it on to the next generations.”
Team tents lined the beach and spectators watched wherever they could find a spot, including on the bluff. The activity didn’t seem to bother the resident green turtles at the end of the beach.
The first final of the competion was boys shortboard.
Seabury Hall sophomore Kahlil Pineres-Schooley has been surfing the waves off Hoʻokipa Beach Park on Maui’s north shore since he was just 5. But this time, when the thin 5-foot-11 team captain paddled out on Saturday he was laser focused on one thing: “I wanted to be the first person, I wanted my school to be the first team to ever win this event as an official high school sport in the state.”
And with Pineres-Schooley posting scores of 7.67 and 6.60 in the boys shortboard final, the first state high school surfing title in Hawaiʻi history fittingly went to a student-athlete who participated in the Maui Athletic League surfing competition that Ball founded more than a decade earlier.
After quickly getting his backup score right away with a 6.60 out of 10, he said he saw the opportunity for his “keeper” coming wide. While the others in the six-person final heat were battling deep, Pineres-Schooley said he paddled wide to catch the 3- to 4-foot wave and he did.
“There was one section that I saw and I said I was going to hit it as hard as I can and hope I stick it,” he said. “I hit it, and released my fins as much as I could, and right when I came down off of the lip of it, I almost caught an edge.
“I was telling myself I’m just going to land it. I’m going to land all my waves. I’m not going to fall on this. I stuck it and hung on with my toes and gripped the board and rode it out. Thanks to my toes.”
That ride was good for a 7.67, highest score of the final.
Pineres-Schooley’s 14.27 points total was just 1.07 better than Flores’ 13.20. He had rides of 7.27 and 5.93.
Seabury boys coach Dylan McCall said Pineres-Schooley really hung on with only nine toes: “He kind of messed his toe up last night really bad. It might be broken. But taped it up and he went out there and did that.”
Pineres-Schooley said after the heats on Friday he was playing soccer with his friends when the injury to his pinky toe on his left foot occurred, making it painful to walk. The toe was a problem while he was competing on the longboard that requires walking the nose of the board, but for short board he could lock his feet, let muscle memory take over and pick the right waves,” McCall said.
Up next, was the girls shortboard final.
Sophomore Skai Suitt of Waialua High School on Oʻahu easily won it with a score of 16, 5.83 points ahead of second-place Sloane Jucker of Maui Preparatory Academy. She had the top four scores although only the top two count out of a maximum of six rides.
“So you got to sit right next to it because it is a little chip shot that gives you momentum going into the wave,” she said.
It included knowing about the little boil.
“I haven’t surfed here in like four years, and we only got little practice sessions,” Suitt said. “I was a little nervous because I didn’t think I had enough practice on this wave. But every heat I was learning.”
Suitt added it was “cool” how this competition featured “live TV, live announcing and live everything.”
Senior Kaipo’i Koa of Kalani High School on Oʻahu won her final with a 13.8 score, putting her in the records book as the first girls bodyboard state champion.
But it was not her first time making history. She said when she was 13, she became the youngest female to compete at the Pro Women’s Pipeline Championship.
“I actually come from a multi-generational family of watermen and women,” she said. “We always talked about this happening. We always wanted this to be an official sport in high school.
Rounding out the competition was the girls longboard final that was won by Hanae Rose of Waialua High School on O’ahu.
Her victory helped Waialua High seal the girls team victory with 4,120 points, with Kapolei High School, also on Oʻahu, taking second place with 3,150.
The boys team title was won by Kahuku High School on Oʻahu with 3,150 points, with Kapaʻa High on Kauaʻi taking second place with 2,935.
For complete results of the state championships, click here.
The tournament appeared to run smoothly, starting with a timely shuttle service to take people to and from a parking lot about a mile away.
Ed the Dread said it is because the Maui Interscholastic League has been holding surfing meets for more than a decade and has it down like clockwork.
“It’s a testament to Kim Ball and the vision he had to take it from vision to reality,” said Seabury Hall surfing coach Steve Thobe. “For all those coaches and all those athletic directors, believing is seeing it.”
Thobe said the vibe has been good, which is exemplified in the beach park clean up that was done after Friday’s first day of competition was over. “It’s the whole effort,” he said.
Chun said he does not know how much the meet has cost to put on until all the expenses are in. But he expects that will all the cash and in-kind donations, “we should make a profit,” he said.
The banner behind the winner’s podium was filled with sponsors, many of whom have been cultivated over the years by Ball.
“Now things are coming full circle with the sport,” said Seabury Hall girls surf coach Greg Smith, noting that Hawaiian Duke Kahanamoku popularized the sport and the spirit of aloha and that surfing finally made it into the Olympics in 2020, with Carissa Moore of Hawaiʻi winning the first gold medal in womenʻs shortboard.
“Now that it’s official, kids can go, ‘Oh my god, we got states like the other sports’,” Smith said. “Now, surfing finally has been legitimized for Hawaiʻi. There will be scholarships for college. It will open doors for the kids. What a blessing for Hawaiʻi youth to be more accepted for a sport that should have been leading the way. It’s going to build so much momentum for Hawaiʻi surfing.”
