At Huntington Beach this week, where the waves are up and it’s predicted to be good all week.
Juniors, longboarding and early trials rounds of the US Open have been run with the ASP Pro Junior finalists for next weekend being Julian Wilson, Chris Salisbury, Tanner Gudauskas and Nat Young in the boys and Coco Ho, Sage Erickson, Courtney Conologue and Nikita Robb in the girls.
The U.S. Open of Longboarding will see Noah Shimabukura, Tony Silvagni, Ned Snow and Taylor Jensen.
In the ASP WQS, the final 8 trialists to make it into the men’s ASP WQS Round of 192 are Pablo Gutierrez, Granger Larsen, Nick Rosza, Macy Mullen, Alejo Muniz, Kyle Ramey, Dane Ward and Tyler Stanaland.
Backing up to last week though, we have a new ASP Women’s World Longboard Champion from Hawaii, Joy Monahan, who narrowly defeated Australian Chelsea Williams in the final at Roxy ASP World Longboarding Championships at Cote des Basques, Biarritz in France. Semifinalists were Jennifer Smith, 2007 ASP Women’s World Longboarding Champ and Leah Dawson, both from USA.
The Top 32 from this event will all be invited to compete again in 2009 for the next ASP Women’s World Longboarding Championships again in Biarritz.
Other events last week were the Billabong Pro Jeffreys Bay where 8x ASP World Champion Kelly Slater has taken out his fourth win of the year from five events and off the best start ever of anyone any year. No. 9 is looking quite a sure bet.
Carissa Moore made it an Hawaiian double, taking out the Roxy Pro Junior event at Biarritz while in South Australia in the Fantastic Cup Pro Junior, New Zealand’s Paige Hareb and Owen Wright from Australia were victorious. For Paige it was her second junior win this year and for Owen his third.
Only the one ASP WQS last week in Hawaii, the Macy’s E-Series, where local Flynn Novak took out the ASP WQS 1-Star event title in great waves at Ala Moana bowls. Being an ASP WQS 1-Star, there has been no ratings changes worth noting.
The US Open main event kicks off this morning with a lot of swell still around and plenty of ASP WQS 6-Star points up for grabs.