Kalani Hansen may not have recorded the greatest results at any of the three events making up this year's Billabong Grom Series, but his freesurfing certainly caught the eye of several of New Zealand's top surfing photographers during some of his freesurfing sessions during and around the three legs.
The Ahipara Hansens headed south for the first leg of the series at Mount Maunganui to find 1-2' onshore rubbish on the Friday of the weekend event. However, the surf cleaned up and was a pumping 3-5' by Saturday night and a very good 2-3' and offshore Sunday morning, said Kalani's dad, Paul.
"This was the best and biggest we had ever surfed the Mount with waves peeling like a point break at times and rides of 100 to 200 metres possible on the coast. I checked the Main Beach but there were well over 150 surfers out in a cramped confined area and it looked dangerous with the number of people crashing and burning all over the chop."
Eventually, after tearing up some good right-hand peelers, the young North Country Boardriders surfer was very stoked to get into the third round of the Mount Maunganui leg, against such a "super high" standard, and eventually went on to make the quarter-finals. Kalani's father noted he was competing against surfers far older and more experienced in many cases. Having turned 14 last December, the Kaitaia College student is in the U17 division (Paul noting Surfing NZ had recently re-formatted the age groups at the comps from U12, U14 and U16 into U14, U17 and U20 divisions for both boys and girls).
Kalani missed the second leg of the series at Whangamata due to other commitments but did contest the third and final leg at Piha. There, the Hansens arrived to find the west Auckland break was at its notorious worst: onshore and building from 2-4' on the Saturday to 6'-plus on the Sunday: "Typical onshore and big and horrible looking," Paul said, adding his son struggled, and bombed out in the first round after suffering a flat heat and finding no waves which allowed any decent turns on.
