Erin Brooks of Canada surfs in heat 3 of the opening round at the Corona Fiji Pro on August 22, 2024 at Cloudbreak, Fiji. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Matt Dunber/World Surf League **MANDATORY CREDIT**
Having won in her lone appearance on the World Surf League’s Championship Tour as a wild card, Canadian teenager Erin Brooks now looks to leave her mark as a full-time member of pro surfing’s top tier.
Conditions permitting, the season starts Monday at the Lexus Pipe Pro at Oahu’s famed North Shore, home to the testing Banzai Pipeline.
“My goal is to make it two (wins) in a row,” Brooks said in an interview. “But we’ll see what happens.”
The 17-year-old will be competing on one of the world’s most famous reef breaks. While her family has a Hawaii home a 10-minute drive away, Brooks notes the unpredictable wave is always changing.
But she can’t wait to take it on.
“I feel like my confidence level is pretty high,” said Brooks, who will face Americans Gabriela Bryan and Sawyer Lindblad in her opening heat. “Being a (Tour) rookie, I’m really just here learning from everyone. I feel like I really have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”
Brooks became the first Canadian to earn full-time status on the WSL Championship Tour by finishing in the top five of the second-tier Challenger Series last year.
Brooks, then 16, scored a perfect 10 en route to winning the Bonsoy Gold Coast Pro last May and finished runner-up at the GWM Sydney Surf Pro later that month in Australia events on the Challenger Series.
She made history last August when, as a Championship Tour wild card, she defeated Olympic silver medallist Tatiana Weston-Webb of Brazil in the final of the Fiji Pro.
After Hawaii, the elite Championship Tour shifts to Abu Dhabi, Portugal, El Salvador, Australia (for three straight events), the U.S., Brazil, South Africa and Tahiti before closing with the WSL Finals in Fiji from Aug. 27 to Sept. 4.
Championship Tour competitors have to maintain a high standard just to finish out the season.
The campaign opens with 18 competitors on the women’s side — the top 10 finishers from the 2024 Championship Tour, the top five from the 2024 Challenger Series, two WSL season wild cards and one event wild card. The field will be cut to 12 after seven events and then five for the season-ending WSL Finals.
The 36-competitor men’s field will be reduced to 24 at the mid-season cut and then five ahead of Fiji.
The winning prize money ranges from US$80,000 in the season opener to $100,000 after the mid-season cut and $200,000 for the WSL Finals.
American surfing legend Kelly Slater, an 11-time world champion, is competing in the Hawaii event as a wild card on the men’s side. The 52-year-old Slater stepped away from full-time competition last year.
Brooks started surfing at nine when her family moved to Hawaii from Texas. She has Canadian ties through her American-born father Jeff, who is a dual American-Canadian citizen, and her grandfather who was born and raised in Montreal.
Brooks gained her Canadian citizenship last year after a lengthy legal battle that limited her Olympic qualifying opportunities to the ISA World Surfing Games in March in Puerto Rico. Brooks fell short and had to watch the Olympic surfing competition in Tahiti from afar.
She is looking forward to a year without legal tangles.
“Now I can just go out there and represent Canada,” she said. “And I’m just so excited to have the Maple Leaf on my shoulder.”
Brooks will be travelling on tour with her parents and coach Jake Patterson, an 11-year veteran of the WSL tour who won the 1998 Pipeline Masters.
In making it to the Championship Tour, Brooks won a wager she had made with her father at the beginning of the season. A happy loser, he shaved his shaggy head and flowing beard.
Brooks is hoping another bet this season might lead to a set of wheels.
“I just started driving so maybe we’ll make a bet for a car,” said Brooks.
She has her eye on a “big truck” like a GMC Denali, having grown up riding in that kind of vehicle while her father had a construction company.
Brooks, whose family also has a home in Tofino, B.C., spent the off-season training with a regimen that included agility training on a trampoline.
2025 WSL Championship Tour Schedule:
Jan. 27-Feb. 8: Banzai Pipeline, Hawaii.
Feb: 14-16: Surf Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi.
March 15-25: Peniche, Portugal.
April 2-12: Punta Roca, El Salvador.
April 18-28: Bells Beach, Victoria, Australia.
May 3-13: Snapper Rocks, Queensland, Australia.
May 17-27: Margaret River, Western Australia, Australia.
June 9-17: Lower Trestles, San Clemente, Calif.
June 21-29: Saquarema, Rio de Janeiro.
July 11-20: Jeffreys Bay, South Africa.
Aug. 7-16: Teahupo’o, Tahiti.
Aug. 27-Sept. 4: WSL Finals, Cloudbreak, Fiji.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 26, 2025.
