Nation’s Top Prep Surfers to Meet in Championships

Many of the nation’s top young surfers will gather at Church’s and Lower Trestles, south of San Clemente, next week for the National Scholastic Surfing Assn. National Championships.

Among those scheduled to compete in the open men’s division are second-seeded Timmy Reyes of Edison High, the Southwest region open men’s champion, and five-time national champion Micah Byrne of Huntington Beach High. Cheyne Magnusson of Lahaina, Hawaii, is top seeded.

The open championship is scheduled June 29 to July 1 at Lower Trestles with the finals to begin at 3 p.m. July 1. The explorer division starts Tuesday with the finals at 11:45 a.m. July 1.

Reyes and Byrne are also scheduled to lead their high-school teams in the national interscholastic championships competition beginning Sunday at 7 a.m. and continuing through Monday at Church’s. Travis Mellem, the Southwest region explorer champion who will also compete in the open juniors division, Andrew Gahan, Greg Long and Chris Falk lead defending champion San Clemente.

OP SAFARI

Mark Occhilupo of Australia and Rochelle Ballard of Hawaii won the Op Pro Boat Trip Challenge, which wrapped up Monday in the Mentawai Islands, Indonesia.

Occhilupo had 32 points in the free-form competition held over 10 days, narrowly defeating Hawaiians Bruce Irons (31 points) and Sunny Garcia (30 points). Andy Irons was fourth with 26 points, San Clemente’s Shane Beschen was fifth with 24 and Tim Curran with sixth with 17.

Ballard had 28 points to Layne Beachley with 24, Serena Brooke with 21 and Megan Abubo with 20.

Occhilupo won the $65,000 winner-take-all purse and Ballard won $35,000, but, according to the Op Web site, the winners announced at the awards ceremony that they would split the prize money equally with the other contestants.

LONGBOARDS

Kristen Raymond of San Juan Capistrano, a national longboarding champion, is scheduled to compete in the $5,000 Margaritaville Longboard Open Saturday and Sunday at Malibu’s Surfrider state beach. The winner will earn a seeding for the women’s world longboard championships Aug. 6-13 in Costa Rica.

Courtney Leonard and Brittany Quinn of Dana Point are also scheduled to compete.

GOING AROUND?

The summer ocean swimming season gets going Saturday with the 50th annual Huntington Beach Open Pier Swim.

The race around the pier will go off in two flights--9 a.m. for the main race and 9:45 for the junior race (swimmers 12-15 years old).

On the beach registration is from 8 to 8:30 a.m. and costs $12.

Details: (714) 536-5486.

MISTY REUNION

Misty May, formerly of Long Beach State, is busy trying to qualify for the 2000 Olympics in beach volleyball this summer, but she also managed to secure a job for the fall.

She will will serve as an assistant to Irvine Valley College women’s volleyball Coach Tom Pestolesi, who served as an assistant at Newport Harbor High when May played there.

May and partner Holly McPeak finished second last week at the FIVB tournament in Toronto. The team is still ranked fourth in the FIVB’s U.S. Olympic qualifying rankings. The top two U.S. teams qualify for Sydney.

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