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March 2, 2005 "Hi Grandma!" Twenty-year-old Anthony Tashnick just won the 2005 Maverick's Surf Contest in solid 20-foot surf. He's surrounded by TV cameras, tape recorders, adoring fans, hecklers from Santa Cruz and a whole lot of strangers hanging on his every word.
"I won! I won $25,000!" Pause. "I can't believe it either. I love you, grandma." Needless to say, grandma is stoked. So is Tashnick. It's his first big win, ever. He's been surfing Maverick's since he was like 16, and all the older Mav's locals -- including Flea, who was out with an injury and Peter Mel who lost first round -- have been pushing him ever since."A lot of these guys have riled me up since I was a kid," he beams. "Not anger, really, but they made me want to try. Like a positive negativity. The West Side of Santa Cruz has made me really strong." Strong enough to withstand a giant wipeout in his semifinal heat and head back out for more. "It's worth the beating," he explains. "There's rescuers out there." Strong enough to take down a field of experienced watermen like Matt Ambrose, Shaun Rhodes, Zach Wormhoudt, as well as visitors Greg Long, Evan Slater and Garrett McNamara (Who later said "I had my money on you all day!"). Strong enough to take off under the lip in the final heat on a solid double-up into the afternoon glare. Strong as any 20-year-old big wave surfer born and raised on a diet of giant drops at Maverick's and steady heckles from the Lane.
Long was riding a 9'8" that belonged to his best friend Tim Dowell, who passed away last August. "He tried to get me to ride the board last year at the contest," Long says. "I tried it out for 45 minutes at T-Street last week and it went insane. It worked pretty good out there, too." Indeed. At about 10:15am, a giant, muddy, 20-foot-plus set stacks across the reef; Long is in position (thanks, Grant), takes off in the bowl and muscles his way across a giant wall, barely avoiding getting drilled through his board by the whitewater bounce. The first perfect 10 of the contest. You can hear the boats yelling from the cliff and vice versa. An hour or so later during the first semifinal, Shane Desmond -- who's been surfing Mav's for years now but seems to be just really coming into his own -- takes off on what many cliffside spectators call the biggest wave of the day; some argue it's the biggest wave of the season, and longtime big-wave observer and writer Bruce Jenkins makes the claim that it's perhaps the biggest backside wave ever ridden in a contest.
Tashnick spends his semifinal catching anything that looms, while Evan Slater suffers a few brutal wipeouts and Greg Long solidifies his position with perfect positioning and smooth, pointbreak-like bottom turns. By the time the final heat rolls around, the wind is huffing northwest -- not enough to blow it out completely, but ruffling the faces enough to make for some wheelie drops and uncomfortable mid-face rail digs. To add insult to injury, the best sets of the final happen 10 minutes before it starts and 10 minutes after it finishes; such is life. Tashnick doesn't seem to notice any of that stuff. He takes off superdeep on anything he can; under the lip, behind the lip, whatever -- and makes it. And more than anything else, the Maverick's Contest is about Making It. And after Tashnick talks to his grandma up on the podium and answers a few more questions about what he's going to do with the $25,000 bucks, there's no doubt what he's going to make. "Gotta go, guys," he says over his shoulder to the cameras. "Big party on the Westside tonight!"
FINAL RESULTS JAY MORIARITY
AWARD REACTOR WATCH
AWARD
*Special thanks to Don Montgomery of mavsurfer and Tom Cozad of newportsurfshots for their amazing images. Also, thanks to Powerlines Productions, who provided us with killer video. Eric W. Nelson shot from the cliff and Curt Myers from the boat. Look for the summer release of their next film, "Down the Line", which documents the '04/'05 NPAC winter season.--Ed
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