Good-luck charm works again for Floridian surfer

VIRGINIA BEACH

It must be the trunks.

Aaron Cormican has a special pair. He calls them "Eye of the Tiger" because of a wild animal print on them.

They're good luck, he said.

"I win when I wear them," said Cormican, a 29-year-old professional surfer from New Smyrna Beach, Fla.

Cormican wore them Sunday for the semifinals and finals of the professional men's surfing competition at the 47th East Coast Surfing Championships at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront.

Cormican won for the fourth time. He was second last year to Asher Nolan, who finished second Sunday.

Cormican won $2,500 and valuable points in the Western Atlantic Pro Surf Series. He also won a surfing expedition to the Caribbean, where part of his experience will be filmed for a surfing movie to be entitled "Kaybuya."

The ECSC is the first of three events in the series. The overall winner gets an additional $5,000 and four additional surfing trips for the movie.

Winning Sunday was difficult. After three days of excellent swell that had been pushed in by a tropical system off the coast, the seas subsided and conditions deteriorated.

To make matters worse, most of the finals took place on an incoming tide being blown by increasing northwesterly winds.

But Cormican won his semifinal heat easily by catching the first wave he saw and attempting to get as many rides as he could without going over the 12-wave maximum.

He used the same tactic in the final, netting high scores for a pair of 360-degree spins followed by a lightning-quick ride on an inside swell that he topped off with an aerial.

"It was so hard out there today," he said. "So I just tried to keep active. That's the best thing to do when it's like that... just catch as many waves as you can and hope a couple of them turn out."

Karina Petroni of Atlantic Beach, Fla., captured the professional women's division and took home $1,000 despite a bout with the flu.

The 21-year-old who has been surfing at the ECSC since she was 12 agreed that conditions were tough.

"Sometimes during the summer on the East Coast, we're just lucky to have waves," she said between coughs and sniffles. "We're blessed to even have these waves.

"But it's been really fun all weekend."

The championships featured 562 surfers who competed in 30 divisions and surfed a total of 267 heats.

A highlight in the amateur portion of the competition was the performance of Bob Holland Jr., who advanced to the finals in three divisions. Holland, who was inducted into the Surfing Legends of ECSC Hall of Fame on Friday, finished second in the legends longboard and legends division, and was third in open longboard.

The Satterwhite family - Wayne Sr., Wayne Jr., Erica and Anne - of Atlantic Beach, Fla., won the Buddy Pellitier Sportsmanship Award. Mom and daughter served as scoring tabulators, dad was a judge and the son is a professional surfer.

Produced by the Virginia Beach Jaycees, the ECSC is a fund-raising project that is the oldest surfing competition in the United States - and the second-oldest in the world.

Besides surfing, the event features competitions for running, flag football, sand soccer, cornhole, skimboarding, skateboarding and BMX biking.

Lee Tolliver, (757) 222-5844, lee.tolliver@pilotonline.com