Huntington Beach surfer Sara Freyre had to make it count as the buzzer was ticking down.

Even with the high score of  9.67 she earned early on, Freyre needed another big score to take the top spot in the women’s finals at the National Scholastic Surfing Association National Championships on Monday, July 3.

With just two minutes on the clock, the wave she needed came her way and she rode it to her second consecutive NSSA national championship title surfing the familiar waves on the south side of the Huntington Beach Pier in front of her hometown crowd.

“It feels so amazing,” Freyre, a member of the Huntington Beach High surf team, said. “I’m just super happy to represent Huntington Beach and have another win.”

For the last eight days, the top young amateur surfers from around the country and elsewhere battled it out in Surf City with the hopes of taking home a prestigious NSSA national title, joining a long list of stand-outs who started their pro careers on the same stage.

“This event was the largest we’ve ever had,” said NSSA Executive Director Janice Aragon, who estimated between 700 to 800 surfers competed throughout the marathon event. “They really came out in numbers this year. We almost didn’t fit it into eight days. It was insane.”

The men’s open final heat was a nail-biter, painfully close as local surfer Gavin Lusby and Lucas Cassity, of Mexico, clamored for top spot.

Lusby looked as if he was in a prime spot to earn the title, but Cassity paddled into a bomb to earn a high 9.0, giving him the exact score to tie his opponent.  In that situation, the surfer with the highest second score, in this case Cassity, wins.

“It was a battle,” Aragon said of the men’s face off in the water.

A new swell showed up just in time for the finals, producing challenging surf for the competitors to showcase their skills.

“Everyone has been crushing it. But the younger kids have been blowing my mind,” Aragon said.

San Diego surfer Zoe Panettiere, 12, landed a huge 8.83 in her semi-final heat with a massive wave. It nearly ran her into the pier pilings, but she swiftly navigated her board in the other direction and landed the turn, making it out unscathed.

“If I wouldn’t have landed the turn, I would have hit the pier,” said Panettiere, who said her goal is to one day be on the World Tour.  “I was super nervous … I was like ‘I’m just going to go for it.’ And I ended up landing it.”

Huntington Beach’s Brett Simpson, a former World Tour competitor and two-time U.S. Open of Surfing champion, was down at the beach watching the talent, calling Huntington Beach the “epicenter” for surf contests.

He was especially impressed by the talent among the younger competitors in the 8- to 10-year-old range.

“It’s our next generation,” said Simpson, also an NSSA alumni. “They are putting so much into it.”

Related Articles

Following Freyre’s win and her hoist up on the sand, Simpson called the young surfer an “HB super star.”

While many young surf stars opt to get homeschooled to train in the waves all day, the NSSA’s goal is to put an emphasis on kids also excelling in school.

With so many stellar surf programs at the high school level, surfers can do both these days, said Simpson, who graduated from Huntington Beach High and was captain of its surf team. Simpson was also the head coach of the US Olympic surfing team in 2021.

“I hope families and kids understand,” he said, “they can be professionals and go to school.”