College students looking to showcase themselves as elite athletes will flock to the WaveHouse Friday, April 18, through Sunday, April 20, to partake in the third of four legs of The Collegiate Nationals. Well, maybe, not all of the students will be elite athletes ” one of the three events held at the Mission Beach venue will be competitive eating.
The Collegiate Nationals is an event featuring sports ranging from ultimate Frisbee to wakeboarding. San Diego is one of four cities hosting the championship that expects to draw 1,000 competitors from 150 different schools to compete. Of these competitors, 40 champions will be crowned in nine different events.
In addition to the competition itself, there will be music at the WaveHouse all day Saturday. Four live bands, a disk jockey and two emcees will keep the crowds jamming.
“Lifestyle-wise, it’s going to be the place to be on Saturday,” said Waveloch event manager Michelle Barth.
Other Collegiate Nationals sites include Keystone, Colo., Reno, Nev. and Boulder, Colo. Each site hosts different events mainly catered to their location. In addition to competitive eating, San Diego will hold beach volleyball tournament and flowboarding competition.
The beach volleyball event will feature four pairs each from six of the top 25 Division I teams, including 2007 Collegiate Nationals defending champion Nebraska. The University of San Diego is the only local team to participate in the invitation-only event. The beach volleyball will be played at Mariner’s Point with the finals on Sunday.
“Our players are thrilled to be included again this year. We’re especially excited because of the depth of the tournament this year,” said USD volleyball head coach Jennifer Petrie. “We have four teams that are going to be playing, and I think we’ve got quite a lot of experience amongst all of our kids.”
Teams of college students will get a chance to tackle the WaveHouse’s 10-foot artificial wave, Bruticus Maximus, in the flowboarding event, with qualifications on Friday and finals Saturday. Local schools participating include Mesa College, Point Loma Nazarene and San Diego State University. Flowboarding is a unique sport that combines elements of surfing and different extreme sports.
“It’s about identifying with the sport that you do,” Barth said. “Snowboarding, skateboarding, wakeboarding ” there’s a little bit of all those sports in flowboarding. It’s a complete hybrid of extreme sports.”
Then there is one event that requires the least athletic ability ” competitive eating. This event is open to any college student with a dream and an empty stomach. Eaters will get four plates piled high with a a hamburger, hot dog and quarter-pound of fries from WaveHouse Bar and Grill, and eight competitors will be given eight minutes to eat as much as they can in the finals on Saturday. Barth said she didn’t have any advice for potential champions of the chow.
“The whole subject kind of grosses me out in general,” Barth said. “I’ll watch the beginning, I don’t know if I want to watch the whole thing.”
The event will also feature four bands Saturday, a pair of competing college bands and two headliner acts. The two competing bands are A Brief Smile, from New York University, and Mumpsy, from Orlando, Fla.
Two southern California bands will headline on Saturday; No More Kings, a rock band from Los Angeles, and Saosin, a screamo rock band from Newport Beach.
CBS Sports will air a one-hour special on May 25 featuring footage from each of the four sites. Further television coverage will begin the following day on CBS College Sports Network for a week.
“CBS College Sports picked up the event,” Barth said. “They had great results last from year and just really wanted to expand on that.”
The events are free to the public.
The WaveHouse is located at Belmont Park, 3146 Mission Blvd. For information, visit www.wavehouse.com.