No idea what you're talking about there on the day of the event this year. I can tell you that there is no shortage of back and forth from both sides between those two teams that has gone on for many years and now largely takes place via Instagram accounts. In the past I'm well aware of elbows and punches thrown in the water, blatant interferences and other things of varying degrees of juvenile behavior back and forth that has gone on since well before my kids were involved.
By the way, Surfing is not a team sport. Don't care if its high school or boardriders, team surfing is stupid. Its an individual sport and if there is to be competition it belongs on an individual basis.
By the way, just my observations based on my 8 to 10 year run of having my kids compete in this, the nonsense you reference mostly originates with the B-team and lower level members of both teams who either aren't competing at all on the big day or go out in the earliest rounds and have way too much time on their hands the rest of the day. The top level performers from both squads generally aren't involved in that stuff and most of them have known each other and have been competing against each other in ESA, NSSA and USA Surfing since they were mini-groms.
Best advice to give your surfers for that event is to let your surfing do the talking and don't leave a single heat in the judges hands. You have to win every heat decisively. Also for your kids who only do ESA and local contests, the judging is totally different at that event. The judging is more like a USA Prime event. In ESA or your local charity event five weak turns down the beach will score well and win you heats. With the judging at that event or Prime a short wave with explosive maneuvers and man turns will score much better than a long wave with a bunch of weak turns. Your top turns have to be as close to 12:00 as possible and your cutbacks had better be manturns if you want high scores. Don't ask me how the hell they score the longboarding because I'm lost on that one.
Why that event isn't using LiveHeats is beyond me. LiveHeats eliminates all the bullshit and 90% of the controversies and makes an event run 1000% smoother for everyone involved. They need to fix that.
Also, they need to have more girls in the event. The past couple years we've had three or four of the best girls on the East Coast and it stinks that only two could be in the event.
If it were up to me it would be more of a traditional individual event where anyone who wants to enter can be in the first round and if you want to crown a team winner you base it on results in the Quarters, Semis and Final only.
PS: Next year you won't have to spend your day ogling my every movement so you have no excuse not to finish at least 6th.