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ALOHA NUI LOA!!! Hawaii's new World Champions!!
By Bunky Bakutis
That's right. You might not have heard the news. Hawaii can be proud, again. Another World Championship in its native sport of surfing has come home.
Bringing the title back to Hawaii are World Tandem Surfing champs Brian Keaulana and Kathy Terada, both from Makaha, who compose probably one of the longest standing tandem teams in the sport's history.
Asked, "How long they've been together?" 45-year-old Keaulana responded, "Oh ----, I forget. Over 20 years. Ask Kathy."
Terada, a 54-year-young nurse practitioner at Waianae Coast Comprehensive Health Center, had a similar lapse, "A long, long time."
But what timing!. Aug. 26, our father of surfing Duke Kahanamoku had to be smiling on the two who won, not only at the historic seat of tandem surfing, Waikiki's Queen's break, but also at a surf festival dedicated to Duke's honor, the Duke Ocean Fest.
The only thing Olympian Duke might frown on is the championship's aftermath.
Where was recognition of this amazing picturesque feat? There was one-paragraph coverage in the Star Bulletin, a short clip on TV, and that was pretty much it. Even Midweek missed the boat with it's front page dedication to UH football's Colt Brennan.
Not only would locals love to have seen some front page beauty in motion. But what about the tourists? They come here to see Hawaii and take some of it home with them. Can anything get more Hawaiian, more romantic or just down-right fun to watch!!
And what was the trophy? The small wood plaque for a World Championship brings to mind an old phrase -- it's not worth a wooden nickel.
Since Duke is in this mix, one can't help think of how he was treated, in the early 1900s, on his return form winning Olympic gold: No job here, and shipped out to California for work.
It's painful to raise race issues. But would media coverage have been different if French or Californian teams had won?
Or is it that, here, in the native home of surfing, media controllers just don't give a damn. Brainwashed into Mainland sports and/or controlled by outsiders sent here to run the show, surfing takes it on the shin and chin.
"I don't get it," said Makai Magazine publisher Lono Goo. "Surfing is our claim to fame, but the media continues to be in denial."
The same seems to hold true for the State Department of Education with its denial of surfing as a high-school sanctioned sport, Goo said.
Goo jumped on the opportunity to bring the tandem championship news to Oahu. He tore up his scheduled front cover page for September, which was very close to deadline, and ran with the event.
"Yea, I was surprised by how bad the coverage was," said Keaulana, "I think part of the blame rests with the contest not having a good publicist. No one to get the word out there."
This year's championship was run by the International Tandem Surfing Association (ITSA), which is affiliated with the International Surfing Association, a group sanctioned by the International Olympic Committee……..
Bear Woznick, a tandem competitor and organizer of the event, took the blame: "It's my fault. We didn't have a PR person, and I was so busy competing and running the event, I couldn't get it done."
However, Woznick said that he did place calls to the Honolulu Advertiser Sports and Island Life departments, but he never heard back from them. Also media was made aware of the World Championship through announcements circulated by the Duke's Ocean Fest organization.
"For me, this is the year of planting the seeds for tandem," Woznick said. "But yes, if we were in France or Australia, the news coverage would have been splashed on the front page."
As for the trophies, Woznick again takes the hit: "They were awful. We were supposed to have a limited edition, but it didn't come through like I had planned." The ITSA was supposed to supply the trophies for the championship not the Duke Fest.
But money was running short. "I put $20,000 of my own into the event and turned what we got from entry fees into prize money for the contestants," Woznick said. The winning team took home $1,000.
"But when you look at the physical feat of surfing like Brian and Kathy, and then see someone dropping a ball into a hole, you can't help but feel that surfing is not getting its due," Woznick said.
Admitting he made a lot of mistakes this year, Woznick feels that he did succeed in his main focus of bringing the "tribe" back together, some 28 teams from California, France and Hawaii.
"When I showed Rabbit (Kekai) all the teams lined up with their boards, he got choked up and said, 'I haven't seen anything like this since over 30 years ago at the Makaha International,' " Woznick said.
The last "so called world title" in tandem surfing was held in Australia in 1999. It was won by Australian Chris Deboitz. Woznick said there were no Australian teams in the Hawaii event
This is the first time a world title has been sponsored by the ITSA.
The ITSA has adopted its own set of rules governing tandem surfing. Those rules include: a partner must be half their partner's body weight; points are set for degree of difficulty for lift maneuvers and for surfing. These rules were circulated to surfers in March.
Some of the rules are different from tandem contests held in Hawaii earlier this year, such as the Quiksilver Tandem Championships and Buffalo's Big Board Surfing Contest.
Winning both of those contests this year, Kathy and Brian have been on a roll.
"I didn't get upset about the new rules," Brian said, "In fact I welcomed the challenge. We just sat down and started studying the rules and how we could adapt."
One thing that caught the duo by surprise, however, was that other contestants raised the bar by executing more difficult maneuvers. Two such moves were a hand-to-hand overhead lift and the pyramid lift, where the wahine is held overhead near the small of her back as she points her feet and hands together to the sky.
"Ho, when we saw that, we knew we had to dig deep," Keaulana said. Some of the entries drew on abilities perfected as Cirque Du Soleil performers.
"We began practicing right there on the beach, that day," Keaulana said, "We only had to see how the other teams were transitioning into those moves, then we could get it. In practice, Kathy went right over on the first couple of hand-to-hand stands. Then she got a wobbly one where she was giggling. Then, we got it."
"When we made those maneuvers in the finals, I thought we had a runaway win," Keaulana said."The reason being is that we had the surfing part down too. But I got to take my hat off to Duane DeSoto, I thought he was the only one who could give me a running. I think he should've taken 2nd, not 4th."
Close life-long friends, Brian started his professional career with Kathy "right after we saw Steve Boehne and John DeSoto compete at Mahaka in another World Championship, back in the ‘80s,” Brian said.
"You know, we have another real advantage,” Keaulana said of his partnership with Kathy. “In the water, you hear some competitors getting over emotional. Well, we're a little different. We just laugh and have a good time .If we fall, we just take it in stride, get up and try again.”
Kathy and Brian have happy families of their own with two children apiece. Kathy often can be found at Makaha Beach on the weekends doing her mom thing with more than her own kids in tow.
She'll occasionally dance hula, body board or long board. Her main form of exercise is taking an early morning jog through Waianae.
She's a little shy about her accomplishment as "World Champion."
"When they asked us to strike a pose for the cameras at the awards' ceremony, that's not me. I told Brian, I'm coming late." she said.
And what of being possibly the oldest world champion in all sportsdom? "Eh, I don't feel that old," she laughed. "A lot of this is trusting your partner," she explained, "and look who I have as a partner, Hawaii's best."
“This weekend watching all the partners, I noticed a lot of them get mad at each other in the water. You know, as long as Brian and I have been together, he has never yelled at me or scolded me,” Kathy said.
“I think we both respect each other, like how he is with his family. And I think he has respect for me. That's why we've lasted so long,” she said.
The level of competition for the world title brought some butterflies and doubts to Hawaii's seasoned team.
“Brian was hurt and we didn't know if he was going to enter,” she said. “And he was talking about maybe not deserving to win because we hadn't practiced as much as others. But I told him, although we might not practice tandem so much, we train a lot. Our lifestyles are about training. So when it comes to making the moves, we're in shape.
“But then I saw the new moves, and, at first, I thought I was too old to do this,” Kathy said with a sigh, “but then I decided to give it a try.”
Reflecting on her 25 years of standing erect on a six-foot, wave-riding pedestal with a view like no one else would have in 10 to 20 lifetimes; or flying upside-down across the face of a glassy, head-high wall of water or crashing whitewater and still maintaining her equilibrium -- we find the lady is still game.
“When I first started tandem with John DeSoto, we felt like we raised a new bar for tandem. Now, with all these new moves coming out, I think it's neat that Brian and I have kept up with them,” Kathy said.
And what about thoughts of retiring at the top? “No, like I told Duane DeSoto, I ‘m not going to retire.” Kathy said.
Former city lifeguard and currently a risk-management consultant, Brian credits John DeSoto and Boehne with inspiring his interest and, actually, coaching him.
"These guys shared a lot of their knowledge with me," he said. Also help came from a University of Hawaii gymnast Don James.
And then there's his fiercest competitor and hanai brother Melvin Pu'u, who chose to sit out of this year's event for a number of reasons ranging from a sore back to some disagreements with the new format.
“Melvin and I always push each other,” said Brian, who, in the finals, used Melvin's signature helicopter spin of his partner on his back.
Brian now joins a legacy of world champions in his family. First, there is his father Buffalo, who won the Makaha International Surfing Championships in body surfing four times, and board surfing once. Second, there is Brian's younger brother Rusty, who is a three-time winner of the world long board title.
Four days after the event, senior surfing statesman George Downing, who is usually up to date on surf news, was surprised to hear of Brian and Kathy's win.
“I had no idea they won,” he said, “And they were competing against some really good people.
“I think this is the problem. There are so many events going on that no one paid attention to the big one, the World Championship. I mean here these guys (the competitors) spend so much time and they don't get the recognition. That's not right.”
The fact that Brian and Kathy were able to adapt to the new tandem format, however, is what impressed Downing the most.
“You got to hand it to them,” he said, “they beat them at their own game It reminds me of a passage in Captain Cook's journal where there is side note about Hawaiians. It says, ‘Don't show them too much, because they are fast learners.'”
“The sad part,” Downing added, “is that here you have champions who nobody knows about. I'm really happy though that Lono and Makai Magazine decided to do something about that.”