Team captain Shane Sykes led the way as seven of the eight SA team members in action on the day advanced directly to Round 2 of the Main Event in the world’s biggest junior surfing event which ran through 30 heats in each of U18 and U16 boys’ divisions.
Competing in the U18 boys’ on the South side of the Oceanside Pier, Sykes set the bar for the team as early as the second heat of the event when he won his closely fought Round 1 heat. He progressed along with heat runner-up, Luis Perloiro from Portugal, as they relegated their third and fourth placed opponents from Belgium and Denmark to the grueling Repercharge Rounds.
Teammates Ntando Msibi and Richard Kidd racked up narrow victories before Michael Monk, competing in the last heat of the day, made it a clean sweep of opening day heat wins for SA’s U18 boys.
Sebastian Williams, contesting the U16 boys’ division in great waves on the North side of the pier, delivered the standout performance for the team. Having grown up in California and Mexico before relocating to South Africa, Williams was in tune with the waves on offer and used his wide repertoire of manoeuvres to earn scores of 8.43 (the third highest of the day) and 7.50 for a two-wave heat tally of 15.93, the fourth highest in all 60 heats run on Day 1.
Fellow SA U16’s, Luke Malherbe and Adin Masencamp, both finished comfortably in second place behind their respective Portuguese rivals to remain in the Main Event stream.
