Students hit the Valley Isle for first state-sanctioned high school surfing contest

PAIA, Maui. — Zolten Poulsen has surfed at Hookipa Beach for 10 of his 17 years.

And it showed Friday, as the Maui Prep senior made the difficult look simple while dominating his first round heat and posting the best score in the quarterfinals of the boys shortboard discipline at the HHSAA State Surfing Championship.

But life has not been easy for Poulsen. His family’s home on Front Street in Lahaina was one of the estimated 2,200 buildings destroyed in the wildfires of August 2023.

They survived and now live near Kaanapali, but they lost everything, including pets that perished.

Zolten found refuge in the surf.

“It’s a place I can go to relieve stress and forget about what happened,” he said.

It is also a place where he excels, with remarkable consistency.

“Probably one of the biggest things in surfing is adjusting, dealing with changes,” Poulsen said. “I feel like these waves are a little more unruly (than those at Lahaina Harbor).”

Poulsen and his Na Pueo teammates won the boys Maui Interscholastic League championship at Lahaina last week, sweeping all four MIL events for the season.

Poulsen also appears poised to score big in the longboard discipline in today’s final-day action at Hookipa, which culminates with individual and team champions crowned at the first-ever state-sanctioned high school surfing contest.

“It would be a great way to finish,” said Poulsen, who plans to turn pro after graduation in a few weeks.

The host MIL was the only of the state’s five prep leagues to hold official competitions prior to this season, and its experience showed in the boys heats Friday, as six of 12 shortboard finalists and five of the 12 remaining longboard contestants are from Maui schools.

Things are more spread out among the girls, but Ocean Lipstein — a freshman who led Lahainaluna to victory at the MIL championships — was again a standout in the shortboard and longboard Friday, and is among the semifinalists in the bodyboard, which she won at the league meet.

Kapaa’s Addison Murphy and Waialua’s Skai Suitt also remain in contention in all three disciplines.

Meanwhile, surfers from Kamehameha’s Kapalama campus are attempting a unique double.

The annual Kamehameha Schools Song Contest was postponed to Friday evening from April 13 because of flooding.

So, surf or sing?

The answer was simple: both. But the execution maybe not be quite as easy.

“It’s a logistical challenge, but we’re making it happen,” Warriors coach Justin Shibata said Friday at Hookipa. “It’s important to show appreciation for Pauahi at the 106th Song Contest.”

Shibata, a Kamehameha graduate, knows it is also important for the most Hawaiian of schools to perform at its best in the most Hawaiian of sports, especially since this is the first official state high school surfing championship meet. Shibata was a member of Kamehameha’s first National Scholastic Surfing Association team in 1994, a program that later won the NSSA championship in 2014 and 2015 with athletes from the Oahu and Maui campuses.