Jake Yono

JY Journalism

8/5/23

The Sport Of Wakesurfing

Wakesurfing is an amazing sport, it is easier than normal surfing and a whole different concept. In real surfing, you go into the ocean and wait for a wave to show up then on your power you go surf the wave. For wake surfing, you are pulled by a motorboat with a surf gate at speeds ranging from 9-13 MPH starting with a rope to get up then once you feel comfortable let go of the rope. But you still control what you do and how you perform while you are in the wave. In this article, I will be explaining how I got into wake surfing and I will be talking about my very own Union Lake Wake Surfing League and how we opened up the surf gate back in 2019.

  My family has been on the lake our entire lives, up until 2019 we had a boat but we only tubed on it, we also had a jetski which we cruised around in. In 2019 we wanted something different so we purchased a Malibu wake surfing boat and that was the inaugural season of the Union Lake Wake Surfing League (ULWSL). As we all know everyone starts somewhere when our league started in 2019 we only had 4 surfers now we are up to 9 wake surfers in the league's history. I did not keep track of stats in 2019 but all we did was that our first ever get-up was by Emilene after about 10 tries then Grant, Jake, and then Sarah. Those were all the surfers in our inaugural year. In the actual wake surfing, all we were doing once we finally got up was holding onto the rope and letting the wave control us until we lost control and fell off. We did that in 2019 and then in 2020 we finally started to consistently let go and rope and me and grant started to carve. Also in 2020 Anna made her debut and got up for the first time also in 2020 the 3 brothers Marvin, Mason, and Marcus all made their debuts. 2019 and 2020 was a great era for the ULWSL

Now let’s move on to 2021. In 2021 we traded in our old boat for a new one, the new boat is a Malibu 23 LSV Wakesetter. It generates a bigger wave than our old boat as it was having problems as we got rid of it. At the start of 2021, we had a pretty slow start to the year as our new boat had some technical problems and it took a long time to come in. As this happened and our old boat had problems in late 2020, I decided to combine the 2 seasons (2020-2021) into one. The league took off in 2021, everyone was going without the rope and we were all doing light turns and carving without the rope. The 2020-2021 season was the first season I incorporated surf time into the stat book as we were surfing consistently for the first time. Also in 2021, we were getting bored of just standing and carving around so Grant became the first surfer to attempt the 360 rotation. The main tip to completing the 360 is that you must put your hand in the water and push back to create that momentum if you're a beginner and you cannot spin on your own. Also, you must start with forward momentum, get low, stay balanced, and spin your whole body around. Grant attempted this for nearly 2 years until he got it on August 3rd of this year. Now I am trying to work on the 360 and I’m in line to be the next surfer to land the 360 spin. Now let’s talk about boards. When we started the league all the kids since 2023 had been using the smaller board except me when I started to use our bigger board on July 10th. I grew into a bigger board now and I love it. I can make jumps on it and turn like never before. For now, though we can only do 360s on the smaller I believe eventually we will get to do them on the bigger board. 

Wake surfing is now one of my favorite water sports, we have a league for it now and the stats I keep track of are get-up percentage, let go of the rope percentage, lead-offs, appearances, runs, surf time, and end of the season awards. Overall wakesurfing is a great sport and we are all getting better at it. (I will link our all-time stats below if you would like to check them out.) no 2019 stats).