It was mid afternoon on Monday when my phone rang, it was O-Dog. “Hey DK, The Red Bull Riders Cup is going down this week, you should come down to the Point”. So I jumped in my car and headed over to the contest to watch Brad Gerlach’s brain child unfold. The Red Bull Rider’s Cup is a surf contest that involves high schools assembling teams to compete in a structured game format complete with coaches, referee’s, a score board, time outs and substitutions. Now don’t get me wrong, I love surfing…but contests don’t always work out for the crowds pleasure. More often than not, its a cold, dreary day with barely a rideable wind swell pushing through. Did I mention it was cold and windy with barely a rideable swell on Monday? Once I arrived and did the high five, shaka shake with all the boys…my interest in how The Game is played caught my attention immediately. Surfers are on a team that all works together to maximize the quantity and quality of waves. In a normal contest if your friend is going for a wave, you will try to block them or weasel the wave. Not so using The Game format. I was hooked, it didn’t matter that the waves were smaller than what I would normally hang out and watch..I was enthralled by the kids working together to spot the best waves and help their team. The spectators were on their feet screaming and yelling. To be honest, you know when you are watching a ball game and someone cracks a double…same energy is going down at The Red Bull Rider’s Cup. Red Bull flew in young gun Jamie Sterling to hang out all three days, pro surfer coaches were Jason “Ratboy” Collins, Homer Henard, Matt Rockhold with Omar Etcheverry announcing with a couple guest appearances from Homer and Austin Smith Ford. On Thursday, I grabbed Omar, Gerr and Jamie Sterling and we headed down to KDON 102.5 to do some interviews with my boys The Morning Madhouse. Later that day, the finals were going off and it came down to Harbor High VS. Soquel High..Ashton Madely of Soquel High could not be stopped and lifted Soquel High to the National Red Bull Rider Cup Championships to be held later this summer. After all the excitement wound down, we all headed over to Aloha Island Grill for the awards ceremony and video recap. Tons of food and stories later, I parted ways with the Red Bull crew realizing there may be a major switch in the way surf contests go down in the future.