Wakesurfing siblings from Victoria catch waves and compete professionally
Riding a wave on a Minnesota lake in the summer is a fun, casual activity on a nice day for many, but for 21-year-old, Tyler Stewart of Victoria, it’s a competitive gig. He is a professional wakesurfer, and he’s one of the best in the world.
When Tyler was a young teenager, he saw wakesurfing at a championship event on Lake Minnetonka, and he’s been hooked ever since.
“Once you get consistent at one trick, you start working on the next,” Tyler said. “And yeah, you keep building on your progress.”
Wakesurfing is different than wakeboarding. The surf, you aren’t going as fast and rely on riding the wave, not being towed behind the boat.
“Wakesurfing we’re going around 11 miles per hour,” Tyler explained. “The board is not strapped to your feet, so we’re actually surfing in front of the wave.”
Tyler can catch a wave, he also catches flights. He is a two-time world champion and competes all over the globe.
“I just got back from Japan a couple of weeks ago. Last year I went to Dubai, Hong Kong, and Canada,” Tyler said with a smile on his face.
World travel, and world championships, but Tyler isn’t the only one in his family that is a professional wakesurfer.
His younger sister, Ava, is an up and coming star as a 17-year-old. She has watched and learned from Tyler and is now a professional, making her own name in the sport.
“A lot of people ask me actually about the dynamic of having a world champion brother basically as your coach for all of these years,” said Ava. “I think it’s really funny because he is hard on me because he does have high expectations of me, but it pushes me really hard.”
In a semipro division, Ava went undefeated in 2022, and was the Outlaw Skim World Champion that same season.
The Stewart siblings have to be their own billboards. Websites, posting videos to social media, they even design their own boards. Marketing themselves is as important as riding a wake.
“It’s definitely like a full time job, we like to profit off some social media too to push ourselves out and our brands,” said Ava. “Our boards, boat sponsor and we have some clothing sponsors and it’s a lot of social media and we film almost every day.”
Tyler and Ava are active on social media, posting videos of their wakesurfing.
Click through the following links to view their content:
The Minnesota Wakesurf Championship was scheduled for this weekend in Stillwater, but due to high water levels on the St. Croix River, the competition portion of the weekend is canceled
Tyler and Ava planned on competing in Stillwater, Tyler has won the event multiple times.
For more information on the Minnesota Wakesurf Championship, click here.