The biggest surf event of the decade

By Nick McGregor

Drive through St. Augustine Beach on any June weekend, and you’re sure to see surfers of all shapes and sizes heading for the playful summertime waves. But swing down to the St. Johns County Pier on June 26^th-29^th, and you’ll see an extra couple hundred surfers, all in town for the 1^st Annual National Kidney Foundation Pro-Am Surfing Festival. The NKF, which has produced an extremely successful Labor Day Surfing Festival in Cocoa Beach for 23 years running, made the decision in 2008 to bring a legitimate professional competition back to St. Augustine for the first time in a decade, while providing a much-needed boost to the local economy.

In order to expand its surf offerings, the NKF utilized the deep roots and insider knowledge of its most visible spokesmen, the Salick brothers. Phil and Rich, well known in the surfing world as pioneering East Coast competitors and surfboard shapers, are also highly publicized for their dedication to helping those with kidney issues.

As a member of the U.S. and World Surfing Teams, Rich spent the late 1960s and early 1970s chasing waves around the globe, before being diagnosed with a major kidney disease in 1973 that forced him to endure thrice-weekly dialysis treatments and removed him from his beloved ocean. So Phil did what any twin brother would: Without asking, he offered to donate his own kidney to Rich. The transplant took place in 1974 at the University of Florida, but it was almost a year before Rich could return to surfing, with the help of a specially-designed pad to protect his kidneys. He came back with a ferocity unheard of in a transplant recipient, receiving recognition by Contemporary Dialysis Magazine as the first athlete to ever return to his sport at the professional level after a kidney transplant. His first post-transplant victory trophy still stands in the dialysis center at UF where he spent so many hours.

In 1976, Phil and Rich decided to share some of their good fortune with other kidney patients by holding a fundraiser and competition. The first Florida Team Invitational raised $125 in cash; the brothers immediately took the money to dialysis centers and donated it directly to struggling patients. After nine years of grassroots benefits, UF Chief of Nephrology Dr. C. Craig Tisher urged the brothers to upgrade their Team Invitational into a national event. With the help of NKF Executive Director Spero Moutsatsos, the 1985 NKF Florida Team Invitational Pro-Am in Cocoa Beach raised $67,000, a considerable increase over even the most profitable Invitational ($1600) of years past.

By 1988, over 100,000 people were turning out for the now-Labor Day staple in Cocoa. And as the contest nears a quarter-century of existence, over $5 million has been raised for patient support, public education, and organ donation.

One more quick anecdote: After twelve years, Rich’s kidney transplant from Phil contracted the same nephropathy that plagued his original kidney, and older brother Channing had to step up in 1986 to provide a second transplant. That kidney suffered another reoccurrence in 1999, and this time younger brother Wilson did his part by providing a third transplant. “My mom instilled in us all a great gift of self-sacrifice,” Rich says. “My whole family has always stepped forward to help.”

Now fast-forward back to St. Augustine in 2008. “We basically saw the need for a North Florida event,” says Phil, who along with Rich belongs to the East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame, “and we decided to spread the National Kidney Foundation word that way.”

He attributes much of the reason for expanding into St. Augustine to Greg “GT” Taylor, a well-known local surfer, industry sales staple, and Christian Surfers supporter. “GT was one of our old Salick Surfboards teamriders,” Phil remembers. “So it seemed appropriate to do an event up there.”

He and the National Kidney Foundation received a tremendous response from local businesses, with Aqua East taking top sponsor billing while the Surf Station and The Pit also kicked in for press and sponsor receptions, skate ramp demos, and other donations that will hopefully attract the kinds of crowds that flock to the Labor Day NKF Festival; last year, over 350 volunteers, 600 competitors, and 150,000 attendees turned out in Cocoa Beach.

And that will mean a major injection of tourists coming to town during the height of this summer of impossibly high gas prices. “This is going to be a great thing,” says Tory Strange, owner of the Surf Station. “The Salicks put on wonderful events, and this shows the local surf community can raise money and do good.”

Strange plans to send several of his shop’s professional teamriders to compete in the event, and believes that bringing professional competition back to the area will provide a boost for the whole area. “We haven’t had a pro contest since the Alec Maitland, I think back in 1999,” Strange recalls. “Definitely nothing of this scale in a long time. We’re stoked on it, I’m personally behind it, and most importantly, it’s for a good cause.”

Even though local surfers will tell you June is usually a month best spent scouring the Internet for cheap flights to Costa Rica, Phil Salick can’t wait to set up his elevated judges’ scaffolding at the popular St. Augustine Beach Pier. “The north side breaks just like the south side of the Cocoa Beach Pier,” Salick laughs, “and even on a barely two-foot day, some kind of waves will break.”

Salick also points out the NKF did their research to ensure they wouldn’t interfere with any other contests, allowing competitors from all over the region to mark their calendars early for a weekend in St. Augustine. And as this writer will attest (having lived in both cities), 150,000 people coming to Cocoa Beach is no big deal; the cruise ships docking at Port Canaveral bring that many tourists through every week. But for St. Augustine and St. Augustine Beach, where I worked in the tourist-driven service industry for six years, any fraction of those numbers would be an economic godsend, benefitting everyone from hotel owners to bartenders to waitresses to busboys. “Even if we get half the entries we do on Labor Day,” Salick quips, “we’ll be doing pretty good.”

So let’s recap: First major St. Augustine pro contest in almost a decade, a weekend full of parties, camaraderie on the beach and healthy competition in the water, scores of live bands, killer local food, autograph signings, bikini contests, surf schools … all in the name of education, research, and kidneys. Talk about something for the whole family.