Billy Kemper rode through a bit of a turbulent winter. He took a bounce off the reef at Pipe in mid-December that resulted in a grade two MCL tear — not a devastating injury but nothing to sniff at, and definitely something that would take the average Joe out of the water for a minute. But Kemper called the incident his “first big red flag of the winter,” keeping in mind that his other knee had to be reconstructed just over two years earlier after his devastating Morocco wipeout.
Some stem cells and a couple weeks of recovery had him back in the water though. And then the Eddie was called on.
“I’ll surf it on one leg,” he said.
And then the Eddie was called off when conditions fell apart. And then he took another beating at Pipe, knocked unconscious and pulled out of the water at the Backdoor Shootout. His family was on the beach watching, and Kemper wrestled with the reality of his children seeing their father unconscious after a wipeout for the first time.
“They’ve never seen me get rescued like that,” he said. “One of the first things I saw when I was on the stretcher, I turned my head and I made eye contact with my son, Lion, who’s five years old, screaming.”
Kala Grace, one of Kemper’s closest friends, took a near-deadly spill at Pipe the next day too. You can see that the red flags were stacking up for Kemper in what seemed to be like “a doomed winter.”
“I probably would have just told you I think I’m gonna sit back. I think my winter came to an end,” he admits.
But then the Eddie was called on again, the event Kemper sums up as “the reason why we’re out there, what we’re doing.” It’s an event he says he’d have to be dead to miss.
“Being rewarded with the Eddie, I think the mental and spiritual effect of what that event did to me, it just changed my outlook on everything.”
The 2023 Eddie, as you’ll remember, turned out to be one of the biggest days ever surfed at Waimea, if not the biggest, according to many. Kemper went on to place fourth in the event, and he recalls the day and the feelings of overcoming what had at times felt like a doomed winter.
