Long Beach surfer faces biggest waves yet

Will Skudin nominated for 2016 Surfline Best Overall Performance Award

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In 1996, a young Will Skudin experienced the biggest waves he had ever seen. Hurricane Edouard had made its way to Long Beach, and the 11-year-old was just trying to keep up with his two older brothers. He would switch to his boogie board, then give surfing another go, but as he got stuck in the frothy currents, his brothers labeled him Whitewater Willy.

Four years later, the Long Beach resident sat around a table with his parents and his uncle, sharing with them his dreams of big-wave surfing, which he’d had since age 7.

“Speed up [15 years] later and I’m with those same three, nominated as one of the top 10 best big-wave surfers in the world,” said Skudin, who took his family to the World Surf League’s Big Wave Awards ceremony in California last month. “It’s been a dream of mine for a long time to be on that level with these guys that were like heroes to me my whole life, and are now peers of mine and friends of mine.”

After a winter of chasing El Nino-fueled swells around the world, Skudin, 30, now a professional surfer sponsored by Hurley, was one of 10 watermen to be nominated for the 2016 Surfline Men’s Best Overall Performance Award — the first surfer from the Northeast to be a finalist. He and his brother Cliff, co-owners of the Skudin Surf School, have helped raise Long Beach’s profile in the surfing community.

In addition to WSL’s five annual events, photographers and videographers follow the world’s premier surfers around the globe, sending in footage from their best sessions to be voted on at the end of the year. Skudin took advantage of historically large waves, racking up more than a dozen Ride of the Year and Paddle Award entries for waves he rode in California, Oregon, Hawaii and Mexico.

“It was one of those years where I was surfing big waves five times more than last year,” he said, adding that the surfing community has described this year’s waves as the biggest they’ve been since 1997. “You could put the last four years together and it wouldn’t even equal what I did this year.”

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