Rincon Invitational 2019 – Results and Wrap Up

Going back to 1997 (ten years of the Clean Water Classic), and now in our 12th year of the Invitational, there have been a good number of memorable weekends – and this year was one of them!The weather defied predictions and was beautiful both days. The surf was small on Saturday, though you wouldn’t know it from the number of waves ridden (actually more waves were surfed than on Sunday!)But then on Sunday we were blessed with a new swell that gave us hours and hours of good surf.

Of course so many teams and team members got to experience some truly memorable moments during the event – way too many to even try to list them. However, some special highlights included: 

• The Team Spirit Award earned by La Jolla Shores Surfing Association in the last light of Saturday afternoon and the surf almost non-existent – but they didn’t seem to care – they were stoked!
• The Team Spirit Award earned by Swamis Surfing Association – it was quite a sight to see all ten team members on one wave Sunday morning in the pre-dawn darkness (thanks to daylight savings time shift).
• First Place in Sharing Surfers (Saturday) went to the Ventura Scholastic Surf League groms – who exemplified the sharing the stoke of our event with a score of 235 points! (almost 100 points ahead of the next best team)
• The Best Wave Award (Sunday) went to A Walk on Water. They surfed last on Sunday and got some of the best waves of the entire weekend – including one wave ridden by three surfers on one board all down the line of a perfect Rincon wave.
• The Calif Adaptive Surf Team, led by Mark Thornton and Dana Cummings, along with the volunteers from the Best Day Foundation – got in the water right when the new swell came in. A total of almost 25 surfers rode dozens of waves, including one wave that was ridden by 12 surfers overall.
  

Just as important as the surfing was the reason we have the Invitational in the first place: fundraising for scholarships. And t hanks to extra contributions to the event fund from the Pacific Beach Surf Club and Windansea Surf Club, we are happy to announce that the new Dr. Walter Munk Scholarship will be awarded in the amount of $1,000.We can also announce that we will be able to increase the amount of the OLAS Foundation scholarships to a total of $1,000.And of course we are also supporting the Sophia Tiar’e Bartlow Scholarship through the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara in the amount of $2,500 thanks to contributions from the event fund and the Bartlow Family.

In closing, many thanks to all the team captains for their efforts in coordinating their teams’ contributions to the event fund.Many thanks to the Best Day Foundation for Mike providing safety coverage all day both days – and Sophie for her invaluable help with the scorekeeping.And our appreciation to Cher Pendarvis for the artwork and Ellen Coudray at American Silkscreen for their extra efforts on the hats and beanies.

Glenn Hening and the Rincon Invitational Organizing Committee: 
Rob Woods, Jason Kline, Scott McNutt, Christian Brock, and Greg Johnson.(And of course my wife Heidi!)