Editor’s Note: This story was created with the help of SMKFLWR.
How you view Kei Kobayashi’s 2020 — like pretty much anything else this year — is an easy measure of your instinctive glass half-full or glass half-empty leanings. The San Clemente native is the last surfer to have won a contest that mattered, and that was almost six months ago. To top it off, after three years of traveling and competing full time on the QS, the March 15 Ron Jon Quiksilver Pro win in Cocoa Beach, Florida was Kobayashi’s first as a professional.
Three days earlier the WSL had decided to postpone all events through March as the world slipped into round-the-clock pandemic management. Those postponements eventually got extended through June. Then in July, the WSL announced the entire year would be canceled. So if you’re a glass half-empty kinda person, you’d imagine winning your first contest and then being forced to stay at home jersey-less for another year would be torture. The glass half-full approach would be happy to go out on a high note. It turns out Kobayashi is in the latter group, figuring out how to carry momentum into surfing’s (fingers crossed?) 2021 return.
“In a way, it’s really cool because I’ve never been home for this long,” Kobayashi says. “For the last three or four years, it’s been nonstop. So it’s refreshing to be home and with my family.”
At 21, Kobayashi estimates he’s been home only two or three months each year since joining the QS full time. And those two or three months were never consecutive. He’d typically get a couple of days in California between contests “then back to Japan. Three days, then to Mexico,” he explains. This year alone he competed in China, Africa, and twice in Australia before the world hit pause. His one contest in his home country took place 2,500 miles away from California. They’re all plots on a long journey the entire Kobayashi family’s been on with Kei — all of it very much fueled by a love for surfing (and The Eagles).
“It’s a super cool story. My parents moved from Japan in their mid-twenties to come surf Uppers (and) Lowers. They didn’t know each other at the time,” he elaborates, “but they did meet in the lineup at Uppers one day.” Oh, and his dad was actually inspired to come surf California because of the famous song by The Eagles. The rest, as you’d say, is history. Kei and his brother, Shaw, were raised surfing and competing with the support of their parents even when sponsorship money wasn’t available to bankroll QS and Junior events. Kei says his brother never received the sponsorship support to really go for it on the QS, which parlayed itself into motivation for the younger Kobayashi.
“That’s pushed me a lot to make my dream a reality for both of us. I believe I’ll qualify for the World Tour,” he says, which explains a great deal of how he’s chosen to invest his 2020, so-called downtime. “I’m super stoked to call Shaw my big brother. He’s a huge inspiration and I’m going to do everything it takes to make it happen.”
So with no contests on his docket or travel allowed outside driving for waves in Southern California, Kobayashi doesn’t talk about the past six months like it’s been a summer vacation. He’s traded most of his travel responsibilities for training and preparing for when competition comes back.
“I’ve been actually working harder than I ever have, training harder than I’ve been surfing,” he says. And as it turns out, all the training has him caught between relishing family time, enjoying sleep in his own bed, yet still being honest that he wishes the old grind were back now.
But in the grand scheme, with proper perspective, slowing down for several months has provided positive life changes for many. For Kei, it’s a simple matter of appreciating home and reconnecting with the people who’ve been in his corner from day one. It probably didn’t hurt to go into quarantine with a fresh victory under his belt, either.
“Really, at the end of the day, whenever you get a break from the sport — it’s my perspective — you’ve gotta take the positives out of everything and look at getting to spend more time with your family when you don’t really get to on the road,” he says. “That’s just the way I’ve been looking at it.”
