Looking at this photo, it seems like so long ago. John John was this young, long haired blonde kid who surfed Pipe. I remember seeing him paddling out in pretty big conditions and thinking that he was going to drown. But he didn’t. And then he caught one of those big waves. But that’s all he did, right? Because for the longest time, very few people thought he would grow into anything more than a Pipe specialist. And while Kolohe was getting all the attention, John John kept surfing and slowly started to show people what he could do outside of Hawaii. Vans boat trips and Lost Atlas alley oops. O’Neill turned to Hurley, and after a while everyone had forgotten that John John was 14 for five years. —Nate Lawrence