Pro-surfer Rachel Wilson paddles hard with the surging tide, noses her board into a 6-foot aquamarine crest, and springs to her feet. Like a dancer, she drops into the wave, carving fluid s-shapes that slash through the pocket and propel her up and down the barrel ahead of the break. Art and athleticism merge for a timeless half-minute, and it’s easy to forget that I’m standing outside in the dead of winter and this magic is unfolding in a man-made facility.
Wilson wears a full-body, jet-black wetsuit with neoprene booties and gloves. She’s wrapping up a one-hour practice session with an all-star cast of friends at Virginia Beach’s new Atlantic Park Surf, where she works as an instructor and elite-level coach. Wilson watches her performance from dual angles on a big screen as Jason Borte, the director of coaching and East Coast Surfing Hall of Famer, applauds and offers tips for improvement. She then takes a break from the action to warm up in an 89-degree wading pool before leading a small group lesson for talented junior up-and-comers with pro ambitions. The 2.67-acre lagoon opened last August, operates year-round, and is the first of its kind in the U.S. It boasts sandy beaches and AstroTurf lounge areas, local food trucks, retail space, a rental center, onsite restaurants, and two giant, wedge-shaped pools that can produce upward of 1,000 perfect waves per hour.
The group shouts praise, and fist bumps fly as Virginia Beach native and recently crowned men’s East Coast Surfing Championships (ECSC) bronze medalist, Coby Nguyen, paddles into a swell. “To me, this scene exemplifies what Virginia Beach surfing is all about,” Borte tells me. He spent eight years advocating for the park’s creation—and flew to Disney’s iconic Typhoon Lagoon in 2018 with a then-14-year-old Wilson to film pitch videos. The multigenerational community is tight-knit and supportive, yet also fiercely competitive. “Surfers here are a scrappy breed and have been pushing one another to the next level for as long as I’ve been alive,” Borte continues. “To me, this park is a testimony to that spirit and the immense distance that we as a community and this sport have come.”
Humble Beginnings
In the early days of the Virginia Beach surf scene, the idea of a 10-acre luxury development centered around a state-of-the-art wave lagoon and 5,000-person music venue in the heart of the resort community seemed less sci-fi than preposterous. As West Coast surfers were chasing big breaks at Sunset Beach or Nazaré’s 80-foot waves off the coast of Portugal, Virginia Beach and its 5-foot breaks would not have been regarded as worthy of such grandeur.
“My brother was nine years older than me and had to buy his first board at a Western Auto hardware store,” says former World Surf Tour star, Wes Laine, whose family relocated from North Carolina to Virginia Beach in 1970. Back then, mainstream East Coasters didn’t consider surfing to be a real sport, and there were just three dedicated shops in the entire state of Virginia. “Most people thought of us as hippies or bums and viewed surfing in a negative light,” says Laine…