Two-time champion Felipe Toledo in action.

At 6:30 am on September 9th, we pile the kids into the car for the drive to Lower Trestles, a mile north of San Onofre. The sun is peeking over the horizon as we drive north past Oceanside, and we wonder: will the waves be peaking too? We hope so: we’re headed for the World Surf League finals, eager to root for Oceanside’s Caitlin Simmers. During the 2023 regular season, the 17-year-old rookie finished fifth in the world in the women’s division; today, she has a chance to become the youngest surfer in the history of the sport to be crowned WSL champion.

With the exception of Cardiff by the Sea’s Rob Machado — one of the ‘90s most popular surfers — San Diego County hasn’t produced many successful pros. Recently, Encinitas surfer Jake Marshall has, with mixed results, surfed the Championship Tour, and it’s just a matter of time before fellow Encinitan Alyssa Spencer qualifies for the Tour. But the meteoric rise of the 5’3” high-schooler Simmers feels special. In 2021, when she was just 15, Simmers won the U.S. Open in Huntington Beach. That qualified her for the Championship Tour, but her intuition told her she wasn’t ready — that she would do better to postpone her debut and spend the year in school and with her family.

Oceanside’s Caitlin Simmers

Her appeal is enhanced by her refreshing talk, which is stripped of the clichés that media-trained surfers routinely recite. At a press conference prior to Finals Day, people applauded when she said, “I’m really just grateful for surfing because I guess that’s what everyone here has in common, is surfing. It’s a fun sport. And it’s weird, it doesn’t feel real right now. But yeah, it’s sick.”

As we arrive on the scene, we find ourselves nestled among a preponderance of blond-haired kids sporting red T-shirts and flags and screaming, “Griff for Champ.” Griff is Griffin Colapinto, the curly haired, affable surfer with a Texas-sized dimple – and San Clemente’s favorite son. A motorboat far out to sea is draped in a red Griffin banner. Colapinto even has Matthew McConaughey in his corner: in an Instagram video-post, the actor/surfer/motivational speaker spoke directly to Colapinto: “These heights that you’re on now, this is your new normal. It’s where you belong. On the way to where you are going.” (San Clemente is also home to both last year’s champ, the Brazilian Filipe Toledo, and former Floridian Caroline Marks. The green blow-up gators dotting the beach attest to the presence of her fans.)

The idea behind Finals Day is to gradually raise the stakes over seven hours, reducing the field down to the five best women’s and men’s surfers in the world, then having them compete in a championship surf-off. The fifth seed surfer takes on the fourth seed surfer; the winner of that heat surfs against number three, that winner takes on the second seed, and the winner of that heat competes against the top seed to determine the champion. (There is significant controversy surrounding this format. The argument against it is that a surfer who accumulates the most points throughout the regular season should be recognized as the world champ, regardless of Finals Day performance.)

Griff for Champ!

Announcer (and Encinitas resident) Chris Cote introduces the surfers for the first heat, doing his best to conjure the spirit of the WWE. Fifth seed Caitlin Simmers against fourth seed Molly Picklum from Australia. They trot down a narrow roped-off section, fans holding out their hands and taking pics right up until the surfers enter the water and get pulled via jet ski out to where the three-to-five-foot waves await them. The pundits favored Picklum here, but Summers beats her 15.17 to 12.17 in the 35-minute heat, and advances to face third seed Caroline Marks. (In WSL competitions, only the surfers’ top two scores are used to calculate their final score.)

The pundits also favored Marks, largely because of her ability to hit the top part of the wave vertically and flawlessly, and her tendency to make very few mistakes. Simmers’ approach to riding a wave, by contrast, appears more radical and risky — yet seemingly effortless. This time, however, the pundits were right. Marks, the only goofy-footer in the contest, takes out Simmers — and in so doing, earns a spot in the 2024 Olympics. Still, Simmers’ victory against Molly Picklum vaults her to a fourth-place ranking for the 2023 season. It is the beginning, not the end, for the girlish-but-not-girly surfer, who will turn 18 on October 26.

Back to the action: Marks eliminates second seed Tyler Wright, a three-time champion from Australia, thus paving the way for the final, decisive heat against top seed Carissa Moore — a five-time champion and Olympian, and one of the most beloved women’s surfers in the world. One of the narratives playing out is whether Moore, a 31-year-old Hawaiian, will find redemption after a painful loss at last year’s Finals Day, also held at Lower Trestles. (She finished the 2022 regular season more than 10,000 points above Stephanie Gilmore, the Australian who was crowned — hence the controversy.) But Marks, only 21, is too good and too consistent, and takes out Moore with relative ease in deteriorating conditions, securing her first WSL title.

In the men’s division, fifth seed Jack Robinson is eliminated by Joao Chianca, a smart and aggressive Brazilian surfer, who in turn is eliminated by Australian Ethan Ewing. This paves the way for a thrilling match-up between Ewing and second seed Griffin Colapinto. The crowd erupts as Colapinto flies through the air. Ewing roars back with his trademark turns, generating huge spray. In person, the heat looks a lot closer than it turns out to be on paper. Ewing wins 17.10 to Griff’s 15.96. The mood on the beach changes; the sky is still bright blue, but it feels like a shadow has fallen over the crowd. Someone crosses Griff’s name off a sign and replaces it with “Ethan for Champ.”

Then the Brazilians come out of the woodwork, filling the air with Portuguese as they root for top seed Felipe Toledo. The final is best two out of three heats. In the first, both surfers put on an extraordinary show, but Toledo gets the edge, 17.97 to 17.93. Then in the second, the waves go flat and the wind turns onshore, creating sub-par conditions — including a 20-minute lull in the action. Still, Toledo is able to put enough points on the board to beat Ewing 14.27 to 12.37, and become the first Brazilian to win back-to-back world titles.

An anti-climatic finish, but Mother Nature is unpredictable and sometimes cruel. If you want consistency and certainty, that’s what wave pools are for.