Today, August 12th, 2023, Surfers For Autism held their 12th annual surf event in Flagler Beach. With 140 kids registered to surf, there was fun to be had by all the participants.
Surfers for Autism holds events like this one all over the state of Florida, with many events reaching max capacity at 200 registered participants. Surfers for Autism not only holds these surfing events all over the state of Florida, but they offer surf lessons for children and adults with autism and related developmental delays.
This years Flagler Beach event drew large crowds of participants and family members to the beach, with more coming down as the day continued on. As the children started their surf heats, the crowd supported each child who surfed a wave. The cheers and applause could be heard above the sounds of the waves.
Among the volunteers who were assisting the kids surfing, there were also mermaids and pirates who attended the beach event to support the children and their surfing.
We had a chance to speak with Moose Brown, the man behind the organization. “Super excited, to be here again in Flagler Beach. We have 140 registered today, and looking to just have a lot of fun, change lives, and get in the water.”
We also talked to Jim Purnell, the MC of today’s event and self proclaimed Executive Level Production Coordinator. “We are very excited to be here, because there was a brief interruption, thank you COVID, which actually took us off of being able to do our events. It got interesting, because parents started emailing us after the first year, saying we have to have an event, our kids are bouncing off the walls, and they keep saying Surfers For Autism, we need to get an event going. So the only thing we could do was haggle with local municipalities, and they would only give 50 person or less permits. There’s no way we can do this type of event with 50 people or less. So we started local chapters, and that is kind of how we filled in the gap. Once COVID was cleared we were able to do big events and now we are back. We are excited to be back with the big events.” We asked Jim how excited he was with the turnout of registered surfers in Flagler Beach this year, “Yes, 140 participants, especially when we are working with such a small amount of beach. Makes it a little complicated if it’s more than that, but yeah it’s a great number. We average between about 140 and 200 per event we do, so it’s always a good time.”
The event started 8am today, August 12th, and will continue until 4pm today. To find out more about Surfers for Autism, you can read all about their organization here.
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