By Maddy Wagner, Staff Writer

Perfect waves roll in one after another as surfers ride in the perfect sets. It’s a dream to most surfers – but was reality for Evan and Chloe Wienert, who spent some time at the BSR Cable Park during Hurricane Florence.

This wave pool is in Waco, Texas, in the middle of the Lone Star state. It may not seem like the prime destination for surfing, but it was for Evan Wienert.

The sophomore has been surfing since he could swim – a long time. He has been on the Outer Banks grom (a young surfer) scene and a part of the local competitive surfing organizations for a few years now.

The trip to Waco was easily the highlight of Evan’s summer. Hurricane Florence came toward the East Coast at the perfect time for the Wienerts – the family had already planned on leaving for Waco at the same time.

BSR Cable Park opened five months ago as a world-class, high-performance wave pool that features lengthy rides, with about 150 waves per hour. The wave pool is comprised of a combination of spring water and sand.

In the wave pool, there are three waves in each set, and three people in each group. Each person in the group takes a wave in the set, then they rotate groups.

“The sand is really grainy, and the water goes straight up your nose,” said Chloe, Evan’s little sister, an eighth grader at First Flight Middle School.

Not wanting to take the chance of damaging their boards while traveling, the Wienert siblings chose to rent boards from the wave pool. The boards had to be thicker than their own because the pool consists of fresh water.

“You want to ride a board a little bit thicker with more volume. If you rode a board you ride in the salt water it would sink a little more because the salt makes it more buoyant,” Evan said.

At BSR, every wave comes in the same as the last, and every wave is perfect. Consistent waves along with no changing winds and tides makes the pool a fun place to surf.

“On the wave, you can do turns,” he said. “If you don’t want to do any more turns, you can stall and then get barreled or have enough speed to just launch a big air.”

These perfect waves gave way to some awesome memories.

“I think the rights were the most fun because I’m regular foot. I tried to go left, but I think the rights were better,” Evan said.

Chloe recalled her favorite ride with tons of excitement and stoke.

“One backside wave I pigdogged (backside tube riding) into the barrel, came out, and did a cutback. It was epic!” she said.

BSR got some less-epic news just a week after the Wienerts had been there, with a report of a New Jersey surfer dying from a brain-eating amoeba contracted in the wave pool. Still, Evan said he would go back as long as the water tests did not contain any more of the rare disease.

¨Well, on the Outer Banks we get diseases all the time. We have a chance of getting a disease by a mosquito, or swimming in the sound at the wrong time,” Evan said. “I don’t really worry about it because hundreds of people have gone to that wave park, and there’s only been one person that has gotten the disease.”

As the two perfect sessions at the BSR Cable Park came to a close for the Wienerts, they discovered they had just had an unforgettable experience riding the new frontier of surfing.

Sophomore Maddy Wagner can be reached at 21wagnerma13@daretolearn.org