Hampton girls excel at riding waves, even on Allegheny River

Once everyone and everything is ready to go, a motorboat surges forward, pulling a tow rope.

As the speed increases, a person holding the rope rises from the water to stand atop a specially designed board. Eventually, he or she drops the line and starts riding the waves generated by the boat.

Welcome to the world of wake surfing, and meet two of its rising stars.

Sisters Kendall and Claire Brabender of Hampton earned high rankings at the 2024 Centurion World Series of Wake Surfing Championships in Fort Worth, Texas. Kendall, 10, took first place in the Youth Girls division, and Claire, 8, finished fifth.

“What do they say at competitions? The future of wake surfing,” their mother, Kristen, said about her daughters’ division, as the girls wrapped up a mid-October practice session on the Allegheny River.

While it wouldn’t exactly merit a mention by the Beach Boys, the Allegheny serves the Brabenders well as a spot for surfing. They dock their boat, a Centurion Ri245 built specifically to produce suitable wakes, about a 20-minute drive from home at the Cheswick Marina.

“Most people do this on lakes,” dad Colin Brabender said. “Lot of funny looks to tell them, ‘We’re mostly out on the rivers.’”

And wake surfing enthusiasts tend to live where the weather is more amenable to water sports than Western Pennsylvania.

But the Brabenders are determined to take the boat out pretty much whenever weather permits, even when summer is long gone.

“One of my friends asked me what I was doing this weekend, and I said, ‘Oh, just going out on a boat surfing,’” Kendall reported. “And they said, ‘You’re insane. It’s too cold for this.’”

When it’s warmer, though, the girls like to invite their friends for rides on the Centurion and attempts at wake surfing.

“They say, ‘You make it look easy,’ and then they try it. And it’s not that easy,” Colin said.

He and his wife know from their own experiences, as Masters division participants in wake surfing events.

“Kristen competed for one year,” he said. “She won the whole thing last year and then retired as the champion.”

Now, they’re concentrating on developing the skills of their daughters, both students at Hampton’s Poff Elementary School.

Wake surfing competitions involve scoring based on surfers performing various maneuvers, from basics like a floater, riding the wave for a short time, and ollie, jumping the board off the water’s surface, to 360-degree spins and even more complex stunts.

Kendall’s road — or waterway, if you will — to the ’24 championship began when she was about 3, riding on a board with Mom or Dad. She went solo, so to speak, in the summer of 2020 and started competing just two years ago.

After joining her sister, mother or father on their wakeboards when she was younger, Claire decided to try it on her own in 2023, and her first foray into the competitive ranks was this season. According to her mother, she likes to meet new friends and catch up with old ones who enjoy wake surfing, especially because there aren’t many children around Pittsburgh who participate in the sport.

The success of Kendall and Claire has drawn them sponsorship by the Blusurf brand of boards. Kendall, well-known as “Keke” on social media, is a member of the Blusurf Team, which “consists of many of the sport’s most talented surf-style riders who blend big air and surface maneuvers with a style and grace each their own,” according to the company.

Additionally, the Brabenders are brand ambassadors for their boat dealer, Wake & Water, based near Lake Norman in North Carolina.

“Being huge wake surfing enthusiasts, our family would love to see more people in our area checking out the activity we love,” Kristen said, and she hopes that enthusiasts’ efforts to make it more widely recognized pay off in a big way: “The girls would love to see it as an Olympic sport!”