Behind every great surfer, there’s a great entourage. Team managers, trainers, caddies, coaches, moms — nobody does it alone anymore. Today, the best surfers — from two-time ASP World Champion Mick Fanning to 12-year-old Imaikalani DeVault — have a support staff. So perhaps it’s no coincidence that Fanning is Imai’s favorite surfer. Imai, who hails from Maui and leads the Open Boys charge into Nationals, is a young beneficiary of solid backing. Plucked by legendary Hawaiian coach Dave Riddle from Outer Island obscurity when he was still aged in the single-digits, and working with shaper/mentor Matt Kinoshita of Kazuma Surfboards, Imai is being groomed by the best to be the best. He got to travel with Dusty Payne and Coco Ho during their final seasons in the NSSA, and now it’s Imai’s turn to make the leap from supporting actor to leading man. But the support doesn’t end there: Imai is also enrolled at the prestigious Kamehameha Schools, chartered for native Hawaiian-blooded students, ensuring an educationon par with his blossoming surf career — a hallmark of the NSSA’s focus on scholastic aswell as competitive success. In between heats at Nationals, he’ll begrinding Spam musubi (his favorite) in the ever-popular Volcom tent and waiting for his chance to blow up — but thanks to his extended surfing ‘ohana, even when Imai hits the water, he won’t be alone.
