The Palm Springs Surf Club is fully up and running daily and because I live so close, I have been making several trips to watch and photograph a few people I know and I have really enjoyed it. 

This past week, I got a call from Sean Mattison and his lovely wife, Krissy. Krissy works at Surfride, one of the best-stocked surf shops in Southern California, and it’s right down the street from their home. I know them from my home break in Oceanside, where they have lived for many years and raised their family. Sean is well known in the surfing industry, being a great board builder and designer and a World Gold Medal Coach and competitive surfer with 20 years of coaching some of the best well-known pros in the world. With this experience, he took the US pro team to a gold medal at the ISA World Championships in Costa Rica. 

Beyond all the interesting stories of his career, I was most intrigued by a story he told me about surfing in a contest held at the same Wild Rivers theme park in Irvine where I had been back in the 1980s. I went there once with my family and surfed but only on a boogie board. As I remember it, it was a pretty small wave but our family had a fun day. This is way back in the early days of wave pool surfing history in Southern California.

Sean told me they had this contest in 1988 and to my knowledge it is the first surfing contest ever held in a wave pool in California. This was a Professional Surfing Association contest event with some well-known surfers you will recognize with a total of $17,000 in prize money.   

Competing in this contest final were some of our sport’s most well-known surfers of that time. In the finals were the following four surfers. Chris Brown from Santa Barbara who came in first place, Kelly Slater from Cocoa Beach Florida took second, Sean Mattison my friend who at the time lived in Jackson Beach Florida took third and coming in fourth was Mike Lambresi of Carlsbad.

All of these surfers have since made a name for themselves and all have interesting stories.

Chris Brown won the World Amateur Surfing title in 1988 and went on to win the World Professional Association Bud Tour in 1994. Chris grew up in Santa Barbara and was a Sea urchin diver by trade but unfortunately died at Arroyo Burro Beach in a fall in 2019. His death was reported as an unfortunate accident.

Kelly Slater the most famous surfer of our time went on to win 11 world championships and is recorded as having the most wins with 56 first-place finishes. Kelly is also an advocate for suicide prevention and was recognized by the US House of Representatives for his contribution and ambassador of the sport of surfing. Anyone who surfs also knows that Kelly went on to create one of the most advanced wave pools in Central California at the Surf Ranch in Lemoore. He also just recently opened a second pool in Abu Dhabi. Who knows if he didn’t get the idea way back then at the Wild River Water Park in Irvine to create a perfect artificial wave? 

Then my friend Sean who I first met many years ago took third. He is a regular at the Oceanside harbor my second home and local surf hangout.

Rounding out coming in fourth place was Mike Lambesi. Mike started as a pro bodyboarder and won the first W.B.A. or Western Boogie Association contest and competed in both sports as a surfer and bodyboarder. Mike later went on to work as a commentator with Wide World of Sports. Mike suffered a severe injury while in Mexico and nearly lost his foot. After many surgeries and rehab, he has been able to regain his abilities and can now surf again and still rips.

This author calls Coachella Valley home. Eventually, the area will have three wave pools. The Palm Springs Surf Club is in full operation, DSRT Surf pool and development that is under construction and slated to open in the summer of 2026 and the Thermal Beach Club. They are to begin construction in 2025. Had you told me sixteen years ago, when we first moved to the Coachella Valley, that we would have three pools, all with different technologies and different waves right at our doorstep, I would not have believed it. We are looking forward to seeing this next phase of surfing history playing out right at our door.

Editor’s Note: In an upcoming podcast we dive deeper into the cultural implications of desert wave pools as David Hilts shares his unique story. Hilts illustrates how the Coachella Valley Surf Club is focusing on wave pools as a force of good and helping area residents with scholarships.