Brad Gerlach’s National Surf League Game on
“Don’t agonise. Organise,” said civil rights era feminist Florynce Kennedy. Now while Brad Gerlach’s National Surf League (NSL) has little to do with radical politics, it does show that surfers can organise a game of their own if they happen to be in the mood for it.
A big-wave surfer and former number two in the world, Gerlach launched the league six years ago. Rebelling against surfing’s traditional one-on-one format, the NSL has been trying to turn waveriding - an often individualistic, profoundly hierarchical activity - into something of a team sport. Here, cooperation and group work can trump individual talent. It’s more about collective agency than independent work. And so far, the whole thing’s been a huge success.
“I’m really passionate about it,” says League Commissioner Gerlach. “I believe it’s the way surfing needs to be watched and experienced. It’s competitive – team surfing makes more sense and is more natural than individual surfing. In surfing, when you get in the water or go on a trip, you usually go with friends. It’s much easier to relate to.”
How exactly does the NSL work? More or less like this: The league recreates competitive surfing by operating through a team sport-based format that Gerlach calls ‘The Game’. The Game pits two opposing teams in an environment that promotes cooperation, tactics, and intense participation from fans on the beach. Similar to most team sports, games last between two to three hours and each team comes complete with uniforms, subs and their own coaching staff.
After starting out with ‘single-match’ events involving teams from Orange County and San Diego, The Game has now been introduced to the Californian school system. In addition, it has become the standard format for the state’s budding professional league, the California Cup.
“We’ve got teams from LA, San Diego, Orange County, Ventura and Santa Cruz,” he says. “The OC Octopus are the two-time defending champs.”
And it looks as though Gerlach’s beginning to spread his NSL tentacles across America and around the world. Besides getting play in most relevant niche magazines, The Game is already a regular feature in the global mediascape through ESPN’s very own X Games.
Says Gerlach: “It’s a performance-based event and people love it. X Games contest goes out to 168 million homes worldwide.”
A bit like ‘organise and conquer’, it appears. Gerlach seems to agree: “We’ve only just started and we’ve got the single largest surf event in the world.”
Understanding The Game
-Two teams
-Sixteen surfers (eight starters, eight subs) per team
-One head coach, one assistant coach and one water coach per team
-Four quarters
-You surf each quarter as a team
-Four surfers from one team go out, then four surfers from the other team go out, etc.
-Each surfer is responsible for one best wave score
-Best scores are added together for a total team score
-Each team is allotted three timeouts per half to use during long lulls or paddle outs
-Three-hour game in total
-Team with the most points wins
Source: www.nslgame.com
This story originally appeared in Huck #002.
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