Wednesday, October 14, 2026
By Brian Tress | Outer Banks Voice on September 8, 2026
For four days over Labor Day weekend, Jennette’s Pier once again became the center of East Coast pro surfing, as the WRV Outer Banks Pro Presented by Pacifico — a World Surf League (WSL)-sanctioned event — returned for its 24th year.
A handful of Outer Banks locals competed in this year’s field, including Will Deane, who advanced to the Quarterfinals. Wheeler Hasburgh, a Canadian raised in the Rockies, ultimately claimed the men’s title on a fast-moving Finals Day where heat times were trimmed from 20 to 15 minutes through the Quarterfinals to make up time lost to two days of poor conditions.
The contest was a Qualifying Series event — a rung below WSL’s Challenger Series, which is the entry point to the Championship Tour, professional surfing’s top level. The top-ranked men and women in the North American Qualifying Series — taking place across Central America, the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean — advance each season into the Challenger Series.
The tournament’s opening rounds ran Thursday, Sept. 3, before the ocean went flat for two straight days, forcing consecutive off days on Friday and Saturday. A wind swell finally arrived in time for a marathon Finals Day on Sunday, when the tournament ran every remaining round in a single day.
“Every day we get there at 5:30 a.m., get the contest site up and running, and meet with the WSL Contest Director to determine if it’s possible to run for the day — we look at the tides, the winds and the weather forecast,” said Dane Jefferys, the event’s organizer. “It’s not like Friday night lights high school football, where you know the game is gonna kick off at 7 — you gotta let nature be in charge.”
Eighty-eight men entered this year’s field, competing through six rounds with the top two surfers in each heat advancing. “It takes around 2.5 days to run in total,” Jefferys said, with the full four-day window built in to absorb any days lost to conditions. “Our competitors are from all over. California’s been on top the last few years in terms of number of surfers. Costa Rica, Panama have dominated internationally.”
Heats ran four surfers at a time, each trying to land their two best-scoring waves out of a possible 20-point heat total. Each wave — with a maximum score of 10 — was judged based on commitment and degree of difficulty, innovation, combination of major maneuvers, variety, and speed and power. The event’s outright winner took home the full 2,000 ranking points; every other finish earned a fraction on a fixed scale. Total prize money was $11,000, with the winner taking home $3,000.
Two of the local entrants came to the competition with different mindsets: Will Deane, an 18-year-old full-time pro, chasing a berth on the Challenger Series, and Miles McCall, 20, a local surfing instructor competing in his fourth Outer Banks Pro purely for the love of surfing his home break.
At the outset of the contest, McCall predicted small-wave conditions would favor “the light surfers, the 18- to 20-year-olds who are light on their feet — there won’t be power surfing, just quick little snaps,” and set a goal of reaching the Quarterfinals. He opened the tournament with a heat-winning 9.15 to advance out of the Round of 88, then going out in the Round of 64 with an 8.15 — good for 33rd place.
“I mean, yeah, I did well,” he said after his opening win. “But the waves weren’t that good, breaking right on the beach. My game plan was to catch a couple of waves in the beginning and then wait for good ones.”
Deane, whose family co-owns the Secret Spot Surf Shop in Kitty Hawk, entered ranked No. 9 in the North America Qualifying Series standings. Of all the events he competes in, Deane said, the OBX Pro is “the one I want to win more than any other. It’s where my friends and family are.”
He delivered his best heat of the tournament in the Round of 32, showing off his local knowledge of the break by paddling to the far southern edge of the field to snag one wave, then running the length of the beach to the northern end to catch another. The two scores were enough to post a heat-high 9.25 and advance.
Deane’s tournament ended in the Quarterfinals, where he placed third in his heat for a 9th-place finish. Like McCall, he’d predicted small, tricky conditions, saying success would come down to energy over power: “You gotta get fired up to surf the small wave — it’s the way you pump and find the pockets of energy in the wave to push you forward. You do anything you can do to get a higher score — because it’s harder to differentiate yourself from the other surfers.”
After his elimination, Deane commented that “The conditions were tough and that’s the way it goes sometimes. The waves were tiny and inconsistent — also the shortened heats made it harder as well.”
“Three out of four times we get strong waves here — this year, we had to pivot because of challenging surf conditions,” explained LG Shaw, president of Wave Riding Vehicles (WRV), a Virginia Beach company with a surf shop in Kitty Hawk and the event’s title sponsor and host. “Ultimately, Mother Nature provided what we needed to get it done.”
Despite this year’s rocky conditions, Shaw said the Outer Banks remains a premier surfing destination overall. “Arguably, this is the epicenter of the best waves on the East Coast,” he continued. “The amount of energy that a wave has as it approaches the shore here is more than most places, because we protrude out into the middle of the ocean. So, you typically get a waist-high wave with enough energy to ride a short board in and have fun.”
Elsewhere in the draw, last year’s champion, Cannon Carr of San Clemente, CA, was eliminated in the Semifinals for a 5th-place finish, denying him a chance to defend his title. This year’s winner was Wheeler Hasburgh, a 20-year-old born in the Canadian Rockies who grew up surfing in Sayulita, Mexico, and now lives and trains in Encinitas, CA. Wheeler was last year’s contest’s runner-up, losing to Carr in the Final.
The tournament traces back to 2002, when it began at the Kitty Hawk Pier. The following year, Hurricane Isabel severely damaged the pier, washing away large sections, and the event went through several venue changes before eventually settling permanently at Jennette’s Pier in 2014.
At 1,000 feet, Jennette’s is the longest public fishing pier in North Carolina, creating what Pier Director Mike Remige called “a water flow around the structure, which makes the break a little more dependable than other areas that don’t have that kind of structure.”
Remige added that he knows “the pier’s second summer has arrived when the WRV Pro hits. The kids go back to school and the surfers come in. It’s my favorite thing to hear the announcers say the names of our local surfers.”
