Koa-lohe Smith-dino: A battle is taking shape

What's more exciting: the walk-off between Hansel and Derek in Zoolander, or the fight scenes in 300? In the first case, the models take turns trying to one-up each other's performance. It's sort of dramatic, I guess. But in 300 it's straight hand-to-hand knifery. No nonsense.

We can think about the NSSA this way. There's definitely strong competition in each individual conference, but the super-stars tend to be spread around the country, so they only really meet up at Nationals. The rest of the year, it's more like the walk-off. The top guys try to get the most wins or the conference title or the magazine feature, but really they're just sending warning shots to each other in anticipation of June. The rest is build-up.

This year may be different, as Kolohe Andino is apparently surfing the Hawaii NSSA season against styles-for-miles Koa Smith. That's the sort of action that's usually reserved for Lowers at the end of the year: Hawaii's top Explorer Boys surfer against California's (and arguably the two top surfers in that age group anywhere). It's like one of the chimps got out of the chimp cage and snuck into the gorilla cage. Now he's fighting the gorilla leader in an epic monkey scuffle. Do you see?

I'll be keeping tabs on the results as the season progresses. Kolohe skipped the first contest and Koa got a decent result, but in the second event - worth double points - they went 1-2 with Koa taking the win. Who's going to come out on top? The viewer, that's who.