Press release from Wavegarden:
This past weekend, Atlantic Park Surf in Virginia Beach hosted Stab High, one of surfing’s most anticipated events of the season. With 56 surfers and 440 air sections and around 3,500 spectators attending across the event days, the surf world will be talking about what happened here for years to come.
For two days, Virginia Beach stopped being a beach town and became the loudest corner of the surf world. By Finals Day, the pool deck was packed before the first heat had even begun.
Australia’s 17-year-old Hughie Vaughan was undoubtedly the revelation of the championship. With a massive lien flip that earned the event’s first-ever perfect 50/50 score for a single maneuver, backed up by a near-perfect 49 on a reverse, he secured both the Pro Men’s title and the Monster Air trophy.
A Bespoke Wave Setting, Dialed In Specifically For The Event
In the lead-up to the event, Wavegarden worked closely with elite surfers & the Atlantic Park Surf team to design a fully custom air wave, engineered specifically for Stab High.
The brief was clear: deliver a consistent, powerful, and creative section that would allow the world’s best aerialists to push their limits, wave after wave, across two full days of competition.
The Stab High ramp was engineered with an easy takeoff into a steeper wall, giving surfers more control over their speed and timing, while the air section allows for maximum pop with a forgiving landing and is launchable every 70 seconds.
” We put a lot of engineering into this wave, but the real fine-tuning happened with the surfers. When you have athletes of that level telling you exactly what the ramp needs to do, you get to a level of precision that would be impossible to achieve otherwise. Seeing that translate into a perfect score was deeply satisfying.” – Josema Odriozola, Wavegarden CEO & Founder.
The result spoke for itself on Finals Day. Surfers could approach the ramp knowing exactly what they were going to get, the kind of certainty that unlocks creativity and makes record-breaking performances possible. Head judge Nathan Fletcher put it plainly:
“The airs we saw people win with a few years ago are now standard airs in this one. It’s definitely altered the progression of the sport.”
When a judge of Fletcher’s caliber says the baseline has shifted, it’s worth asking what shifted it. The answer, at least in part, is the wave.
“One of our goals is to pull the future of surfing forward, and Stab High was the perfect embodiment of that. The performance level at this event was unprecedented for a surf competition, and it couldn’t have happened without the perfect air wave designed by Wavegarden.” — Brendan Buckley, Stab Member
The champion echoed that sentiment:
“It’s so sick to have such a good air section to hit over and over again. It allows you to get creative and try so many different things. Thanks to Wavegarden for designing such a perfect ramp.” — Hughie Vaughan, 2026 Stab High champion
The 2026 edition featured four divisions: Pro Men’s, Vans Pro Women’s, Vans Ladybirds (girls 15-and-under), and Yeti Bottle Rockets (boys 15-and-under). Sky Brown took the Vans Pro Women’s title, Isla Hardy claimed the Ladybirds, and King Nicol won the Bottle Rockets in his debut Stab High appearance. The $60,000 prize purse was split across divisions, with an additional Monster Air award going to the most impactful single aerial of the entire event — also won by Vaughan.
North America’s First Wavegarden Cove
Atlantic Park Surf is the first Wavegarden Cove facility in North America, part of the $350-million Atlantic Park mixed-use complex in Virginia Beach, the birthplace of East Coast surfing. Developed by Venture Realty Group, operated by Beach Street, and stewarded by Virginia Beach native Pharrell Williams, the facility is already establishing itself as the continent’s premier wave pool destination.
“Wavegarden’s innovative technology and Atlantic Park’s arena-like environment provided the ideal setting for taking the sport to new heights,” said Blake Hess, COO of Beach Street. “Stab High Virginia Beach was a masterclass in collaboration and showed what’s possible for the future of surfing.”
In summary, beyond Vaughan’s performance, what we’ve seen is that the younger generation is coming in strong and, as Nathan Fletcher put it, maybe it’s time to rethink the rules of the game:
“In motocross, if you win two 250cc championships, you automatically go to the 450cc. Might as well do the same with the Bottle Rockets,” said Nathan Fletcher, about Loci Cullen. “He should be competing against the big dogs. He’s showing that today.”
Stab High Virginia Beach offered a clear vision of what the future of surf events can look like: high-performance waves, athletes pushing progression, and crowds experiencing the action from closer than ever before. Thanks to Wavegarden’s unique lagoon design, spectators can gather right next to the take-off zone, creating an atmosphere and level of engagement simply impossible to replicate. A new benchmark for live surf entertainment.
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