Winner of the 2009 Southwest College Division Championship (SCDC), the CSUSM Surf Club sees a path for the team to return for the gold this summer.

Colton Tisch, a junior and vice president of the oldest club on campus, said the good surf off San Diego beaches attracts the kind of talent necessary to give the team a shot at winning the SCDC again.

After the division championship, the surfers hope to compete at Nationals, which will be held from June 11 to June 13 at Salt Creek Beach in Dana Point.

In the National Scholastic Surfing Association, which is a U.S. surf organization, members must surf in the mandatory number of events of their resident conference that is scheduled to qualify for any championship.

When competing, surfers go out for 15 minute heats and are scored on their best two waves. The scoring is on a scale from 1 to 10 and those scores go towards the team’s overall score. For instance, if a surfer gets a score of 6 and a score of 7 and those are their best scores, the total score is 13. Whoever gets the highest score in that heat wins. The surf club has five competitions formatted like this every year.

After Nationals in June, the team will be done competing until next season.

“We haven’t done so hot since [2009]. That was the last national title we have received. But we came pretty close last year. We are hoping to make something happen this year,” Tisch said.

“Compliance is what our team needs improvement on because you are dealing with surfers. Everyone goes with the flow as a surfer and … we live so simple, which makes it not easy to get people to coordinate with you,” Tisch said.

Tisch enjoys competing with his fellow CSUSM students. A Solana Beach native, he has been surfing for 18 years and has been competing most of his life and has now been a part of the surf club for two years.
“Surfing will always be a secondary part of living for me, that is for sure,” Tisch said.