Coachella Valley Surf Club founder, Dave Hilts, was interviewed in the Orange County Register for "Wave-pool Rivalry? Kelly Slater’s Plan is among 4 Targeting Desert."
The article discusses the exciting emergence of four different wave pool resorts each with unique surf-producing technologies coming to the Coachella Valley: Palm Springs Surf Club, DSRT Surf, Thermal Beach Club and the just-announced Kelly Slater's Coral Mountain.
Here's what Dave had to say:
Already, surfers in the region are stoked. The Coachella Valley Surf Club was started recently by Dave Hilts, a longtime surfer originally from Huntington Beach who travels from his desert home to surf in Oceanside.
Fellow surfers give him a hard time about living in the desert, he said. “All of a sudden, it’s going to become a surfing community,” Hilts said with a chuckle.
Hilts said he started the nonprofit club with the goal of getting area youth involved in the sport.
“A lot of the kids have never been to the beach,” he said his teacher wife told him. “It just kind of struck a chord with me.”
Hilts took a few members of the Desert Mirage High School surf club [known as the East Valley Board Riders] to Oceanside recently to teach them to surf and said he hopes wave-pool developers will offer scholarships and events for future wave-pool surfers.
“I’m ecstatic. It’s just unreal. It’s really neat they’re coming here,” said Hilts, who in the ’70s was on the first Huntington Beach High School surf team. “It’s a completely new chapter of surfing.”
It really is a new chapter, not only for surfing, but for the Coachella Valley and the students who can soon say a local, "Surf's Up!"
