Mavericks Awards closes winter surf season

The $25,000 prize purse will be divided into three awards for men and women: Biggest Wave, Ride of the Year, and Performer of the Year. Sixty percent of the prize money per award goes to the surfer while 40 percent goes to the videographer. Each award is judged by a panel that includes Mavericks pioneer Jeff Clark, Mavericks Invitational winner Chris Bertish, three-time Mavericks winner Darryl “Flea” Virostko, world record holder for the largest wave surfed by a female Maya Gabeira, and four-time Mavericks contest finalist Matt Ambrose.

After an inconsistent and storm-ravaged winter, a key part of the event features videos highlighting the best rides, wideouts, young up-and-comers and new faces in the surf community. One of those segments promises to be unique. In February, Brazilian body surfer Kalani Lattanzi made history as the first person to bodysurf sizable Mavericks waves. The footage from his groundbreaking session will be shown, and Lattanzi, widely regarded as one of the top bodysurfers in the world, is expected to fly from Rio de Janeiro to attend the event.

“Mavericks is a pretty unique place,” Midcoast businessman and event organizer Chris Cuvelier said. “If you’re respectful, you can get waves. It’s a weirdly welcoming place for people from all around the world.”

Unlike the traditional but sporadic single-day Mavericks contest, organizers Clark and Cuvelier started the Mavericks Awards in 2019 with the intent to have a consistent community-oriented celebration of the wave and the people close to it. With the World Surf League’s big-wave world tour a shell of its former self and the league no longer running the XXL Awards, an annual award show for the biggest waves ridden around the world each year, Clark and Cuvelier see their event as filling a void in the surf space.

Surfers can enter the contest by submitting videos of their rides from October through April. Advocates say the appeal of the Mavericks Awards is that there’s a level playing field for men and women. Last year, 20-year-old El Granada resident Luca Padua was named the male Performer of the Year for the 2021-22 Mavericks season. San Francisco’s Bianca Valenti swept the women’s division, which included Biggest Wave and Ride of the Year awards.

“This new format is way more inclusive,” Clark said. “Because there are way more than 24 guys who deserve to be in it.”