After six days of grueling, continuous competition Hawaii finds itself leading the pack followed by a bevy of nations all in striking distance including France, Brazil, USA, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.

The surf on the sixth day of competition found a dwindling swell, at times, entire heats were relegated to less than 10 waves surfed over the 20-minute duration. When the sets produced, the surfers were forced to make the their opportunities and positioning.

For team Hawaii, today was a gut check. Despite Mother Nature being in a testy mood, Hawaiian surfers made every wave in every heat count. The morning began with a rough start.

Out of the starting blocks team Hawaii lost Albee Layer, Tanner Hendrickson, Matty Costa and Ezekiel Lau all by early afternoon, leaving the pressure on for the remaining performers of the day to keep Hawaii’s gold-medal contention alive—and that’s exactly what they did.

Kaimana Jaquias of the Garden Island remained undefeated heading into today’s competition. After his morning free surf he came out of the water limping, apparently having tweaked his knee. He managed to find some ice and apply it to his knee for 20 minutes before his heat. Like a true champion, he paddled out, scored some heavy hits on his opening turns and followed up by throwing his tail, and slashing some cutbacks, advancing handsomely and unscathed with barely a limp to his canter. Jaquias emerged out of the water victorious with a smile as wide as whale.

Keanu Asing followed in the under 16 qualifying round. Keanu’s heat was stacked with Conner Coffin, Kolohe Andino and a Brazilian surfer. Keanu’s strategy was to get out of the starting blocks early. In the opening minutes, Asing chose a smaller wave rode it to shore in his inimitable fashion of furious motion. But low and behold, the judges were looking for outside moves and Keanu never found a rhythm for those outside sets and was relegated to the repercharge round later that day.

Later that day, in the “losers” bracket Keanu managed five waves each with one bettering the wave before, climbing his scores with every solid backside carve. Today, fate smile on Asing and he finishe the heat in first place, advancing further into the repercharge.

At the World Games, surfing repercharge or losers brackets can have you surfing up to 11 heats a day, as opposed to the typical day ofonly six or seven. Today, Nage Melamed found herself in exactly this predicament. After losing on Wednesday she was faced with three heats on day six.  She captured solid scores and first place finishes on podium 2, scoring a solid 9.5 on one of her waves and bringing home the highest repercharge scores for the ladies of the morning in the process.

Melamed’s third heat in the afternoon was at the lefthander on podium one. She first sat outside but found nothing, and with 12 minutes remaining, coaches Megan Abubo and Rainos Hayes signaled for her to move to the mid section of the break. It was here that she found a rhythm and a series of solid backside grinds and hooks that impressed the crowd and judges as she advanced to the next rounds. But if she thought Friday was rough, she does have four remaining repercharge heats to manage on Saturday before getting to the final. It should also be noted we have three remaining ladies all unbeaten and patiently waiting for their qualifying quarter final as well.

Going into day seven, team Hawaii has seven surfers remaining including Keanu Asing, Kaimana Jaquias, Dylan Goodale, Malia Manuel, Leila Hurst, Alessa Cuizon and Nage Melamed. This combination of riders has an opportunity to take down some important surfers from six other countries all within 700 points of our first-place position. If we wish to bring home the trophy we will need to be on our game all day Saturday and Sunday. The heat is on in so many ways beginning bright and early come Saturday morning.