Infinite Stoke

INFINITE STOKE: Three hundred ninety-seven and counting. That is how many consecutive days La Colina Junior High 7th grader Jace Kennedy (pictured) has gone surfing. A towheaded goofy-foot with a smooth style well beyond his years and a staple in the lineup at Hendry’s Beach, Kennedy marked his full calendar year of daily surf missions on October 8 and is showing no signs of slowing down. “I keep waiting for him to say, ‘Mom, today isn’t really a good day for surfing. I am going to stay home.’ But that hasn’t happened yet,” laughed his mom, Maile Kennedy, when I spoke with her recently. During the streak, Jace has surfed waves big and small, suited up in the rain and the hail, and traveled from Jalama to Oxnard to Central America to get his daily fix, all while maintaining his honors student status at La Colina. (He has a deal worked out with Maile and his dad, Ray: He has to get at least half of his homework done before they will take him to the beach.) Asked if he had any one session that was especially hard to keep his string of consecutive surf days alive, Kennedy recounted a day early last winter at The Pit. “It was ankle high and windy, and I watched it for a while, and it was pretty bad; I didn’t really want to go out there. But I paddled out anyways and got 15 waves,” said the grom with marked seriousness before adding with a smile of recollection: “They were all closeouts, but it was okay. I had fun.”