Damn! This Tetra crew is sick. Like the D.R.E.A.M. Crew, Tetra is also from the Lone Star State of Texas; specifically San Antonio. They say everything is bigger in Texas and for some little dudes Drake Flores, Will Flores, Tommy Wilkinson and Isaiah Rendon prove it on some big spots. You don't usually expect young kids to have such solid style especially when demonstrating some tech-gnar on gaps and rails but these kids rip and look good doing it. Some notables were definitely Will Flores' front board big spinout and Drake Flores' hurricane down the handrail and 270 front board. Real smooth looking.

These are the types of unknown gems we're looking for The Chosen.

Great video, guys.

We're just curious, did you name yourselves after the Texas Equestrian Trail Riders Association?

It's important now to stand back for a second and appreciate that Maui's Chomp Proper crew is enjoying a (surf) cultural moment. A renaissance. An unlikely Marky-Mark-Wahlberg-in-Rock Star-or-again-in-Invincible heroism that should inspire any kid or crew with big dreams but small followings.

Chomp Proper has been Noticed -- officially, in Nike's Chosen contest, but also noticed by the surf world in general as the freakishly unsung talents they are. Thanks to the videos they're putting out (including in Taylor Steele's Innersection contest, which crew member Matt Meola won in 2010 and which fellow member Albee Layer may well take down this year), the magazine profiles and media attention they've garnered, and their humble underdog appeal, Chomp Proper is on a major roll.

The reason it's remarkable is that these guys are not, say, 12 years old -- the age at which most surf notables emerge from out of nowhere to wide acclaim. Surfing hunts and loves and spoils its prodigies, its Kolohe Andinos and Owen Wrights, and by 20 all the talented stones are largely turned. How often is a pro "discovered" after high school?

But in the rush to scout young potential, just as quickly are laggards booted off their rocket ship to stardom -- usually due to an injury or a bad growth spurt or a few too many comp losses. Reality strikes like a drunken marine, and few aspiring pros can rebound when the industry and media turn their backs -- when they're no longer hot preteen product on the verge of a breakout.

Enter Chomp Proper.

Three of the crew's members -- Dege O'Connell, Hank Gaskell and Albee Layer -- are former grom darlings. They all made NSSA Nationals finals; they had major sponsors (Quiksilver, Hurley and Billabong respectively) and bright futures. But all three missed the jump from teen phenom to big-league pro, lost their sponsors, and ended up back on Maui quietly ripping harder than ever.

For most former child surf stars, that's where the story would end. To see the guys turning heads now after a hiatus from the gravy train is both unusual and refreshing. It's possible after all. The dream doesn't die at 17.

Chomp Proper member Matt Meola, meanwhile, is on a whole different post-prodigy trip. He got a late start, skating as a kid while his peers were already gathering passport stamps and amateur titles, and even after he turned to surfing there was no easy on-ramp to the big show.

"I was 15 or 16 when I did my first year of NSSA and I never really did that well," Matt told SURFING Magazine last year, "and then as I got a little bit older I just realized it wasn't for me."

It wasn't really until Matt's homegrown skills appeared online in a 2010 video clip that things picked up steam. He won Steele's Innersection competition and $100,000, got a new sponsor, and cemented himself among the ranks of the young and hyper-progressive. In a year of big stories for surfing, Matt was one of the biggest.

Now, Nike's Chosen contest is a chance for the Chomp Proper boys to chalk up another guerrilla success. But even if they don't get tapped to win -- only one crew will, after all -- they've already made a statement and a heap of new fans, and nobody's underestimating them anymore. What's next is anyone's guess. It's not even winter yet.

Hailing from Anthony Shetler Country, New Bedford, Massachusetts, this young crew of upstarts brings some raw skills to the table. What this East Crew is lacking in finesse they make up for in balls by jumping down some pretty big stuff. We look at videos like this one of Michael Pimentel, Josh Silva, and Fabian Matias as a jump off point for the future. In this video we see a bunch of basic, fundamental tricks done down decent size rails and gaps; if these guys continue to progress we envision this crew in Chosen contests in years to come doing harder, more technical tricks down those same drops. Definitely a solid first entry for a crew of future stars.

One area that is lacking is the personality of the crew. As much as we want to see hard-hitting skating we also want to know what your crew is about, what makes you guys tick.

Make sure to showcase what you do off the board as well as on the board.

You have friends that ride, you all hang together and you produce some killer videos. It's your crew and that's something to be proud of. But you're not the first to find some like-minded individuals, get your shred on and produce videos. Since the dawn of man, and later on, tubular three-piece cranks and BMX bikes, video producing crews have existed throughout the realm of BMX. What follows are some of the most infamous of crews:

The Plywood Hoods

Originally a breakdance crew from York, Pa., the Plywood Hoods (consisting
of flatland innovators Kevin Jones, Mark Eaton, Mike Daily and more) broke
onto the scene in the mid '80s. Jones, now considered the father of modern
flatland riding, plied his trade, while Eaton picked up his mom's video camera
to document their exploits. Together, the Plywood Hoods released the first DIY
BMX video in 1988, dubbed "Dorkin' In York" launching Jones' career as an
legendary innovator and Eaton's as a legendary video producer. "Dorkin In York" produced ten sequels, a DVD box set, and ultimately led to Eaton producing the BMX history flick "Joe Kid on a Stingray." The videos also cemented Jones' place in the BMX history books, along with Chase Gouin and many other later additions to the Plywood Hoods. All that from riding flatland with some friends in a parking lot in Central Pennsylvania.

The Baco Crew

Just a few years behind the 'Hoods, the Baco crew (Chad Degroot, Chris
Rye, Dave Friemuth, Mark Hilson) started producing videos in the early '90s
documenting the Midwest scene from which they came (Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, greater Standard Country). With videos produced by Chris Rye, the Baco crew's motivations were much the same as the 'Hoods, but the video antics were turned up a notch. Degroot brought flatland into a modern age, sometimes barefoot and sometime in a dress, while Friemuth took technical spine and mini ramp riding to a new degree of difficulty, also sometimes while wearing a dress. The Baco Crew produced ten sequels, and helped raise modern talent in the form of Brian Kachinsky and Kevin Porter. The Baco series is currently out of print, but sections can be found scattered throughout the Web.



Club Homeless

From the depths of Texas came a "crew" video maker Dave Parrick once described as "Club Homeless." Documenting the scene around him, including riding from Kevin Gutierrez, Ruben Castillo, Eben Krackau, James Shepherd and himself, Dave Parrick created the Homeless series of videos in the late '80s to early '90s. Eventually, Homeless spawned a bike company and the Homeless crew became the Homeless team. From there, Parrick released the seminal Homeless video "Trash," which brought the handrail grind to the BMX masses in 1992. Following some differences with the brand owner, the team left Homeless shortly thereafter, and attempted to form a new crew dubbed "Family," but nothing could match the influence of the Homeless crew and "Trash."

Nike's Chosen contest is in full swing, and hundreds of crews have registered. Check the frontrunners and you'll see that, yeah, there's some heavy ripping -- but let's revisit the criteria for getting Noticed: creativity, camaraderie, progression (CCP). It's more about personality than performance, and crews should be going all out to amplify the Cs in CCP, showing what makes them radder than the kids down the street.

With that in mind, here are a few token surf crews we'd like to see in Chosen -- ones that could really make a splash and snatch the spotlight. If one of these describes you and your friends, log off and grab a camera already. Time's a wasting.

House Crews
So much interesting stuff goes down when your crew is together under a single roof -- all you have to do is capture it. If you're roommates, siblings, or just tend to hang at one pad all the time, use that to tell your story. Gaps in the action and downtime between surf sessions are crew video glue. For inspiration, see Football Shmootball (about the Volcom house), Shelter (friends chilling and surfing in a rented farmhouse), or any of the early-'90s Lost videos. Or just watch Animal House.

Lake Crews
Great Lakes surfers are a strange, tweaked community that puts common conceptions of "hardcore" in a tutu. Their surfing experience is unique and completely different from coastal softies. Seems like there'd be a crew somewhere out in Michigan just waiting to get Noticed. And you know they've got the time on their hands.

Rich Crews
Kids born with a silver spoon in their beak and a few fresh Merricks in their Range Rover are a blessed breed. If your crew has trustafarian dough to throw around, surfing fine waves and living it up like MTV reality stars, at least film the fun. Money isn't everything, but it might make some pretty sweet Chosen videos.
Sterling Spencer and Warren Smith -- a tight Gulf Coast crew of two. Really tight.

Gulf Crews
Everything about the Gulf -- that it's part of the South, that it's recovering from a disaster, that its pervasive flatness means surfers have to be creative every day of the year to stay sane -- makes it fertile soil for a rad crew to spring from. Cory Lopez proved that surf legends can come out of the Gulf, and Sterling Spencer is proving that they can be interesting to boot. A Gulf Coast crew could kill it.


Nike's all-girl surf crew at the premiere of their film Leave a Message.

All-Girl Crews
Predictably -- surfing still skews heavily male -- Chosen is so far predominately a boys' club. But all that means is that a crew of motivated girls with a camera would stand out like sunflowers in a field of grass. Nike's own surf team just paved the way with its new all-girl surf film Leave a Message, and there's never in history been more talent on the fairer side of the gender gap. A female crew is an obvious opportunity for chicks who rip.

Retro Crews
Check the short trunks, check the fishes and single-fins, check the Ray-Bans and greaser hair: surfing, like the rest of the hipster universe, is revisiting the past in style. Retro, vintage, throwback -- whatever you want to call it, it's all the rage and then some. No doubt the moneyed hills and seaside burgs of Laguna Beach or North County San Diego are home to some fab-chic retro crews, high-lining on keel-fin boards in beavertail wetsuits by day and shooting film cameras at a jazz show by night.


One of the two infamous Volcom houses at Pipeline, home to a crew almost as famous as the wave out front.

North Shore Crews
Throw a rock on The Rock and it'll hit a crew of underground heroes who surf the North Shore better than most of the "pros" paid to fly there every November. It's a quirky little Petri dish of a place year-round, both when the surf world descends in winter and when it's quiet and sleepy after the crowds leave. Part country living, part mega-industry fire pit. Cruising and charging in equal measures. There's more than one crew story waiting to be told from the Seven Mile Miracle.

This list is by no means exhaustive -- in fact, what it's missing is the crew we'd like to see most of all: yours. Connect through Nike's Facebook page to get your crew in the game.