Stand Up Paddling (SUP)

Kristin Thomas has been a SUP Race Junkie since 2010 – a long time for the young sport of Stand Up Paddling!

She started working in the industry when she helped found and became the Executive Director of the SUP Industry Association (SUPIA) in 2012.

In 2019 she was in the first class of SUP ITOs, helping to run the first ICF SUP World Championships. Soon after she contacted and working with the ACA to figure out how to bring the competitive side of SUP to our NGO, ACA, as well as invited to be an advisor to the newly formed ICF SUP Committee.

Joining others in seeing a need to organize the 100s or races and thousands of racers in the USA, Kristin was a founding Board member and now serves as the President of USA SUP.

Besides racing in the Open & Masters age groups year round for the past 14 years, she has also had the opportunity to commentate, officiate, guide trips, and host an interview podcast for 2 1/2 years during COVID, all in the sport she loves. Kristin resides, paddles and surfs in Southern California, recently moving from laguna Beach to San Diego.

Andrew Surles has been in the paddling world for over 10 years. He has raced at many international events for paddling including sprint kayak, marathon kayak, dragon boat, and SUP. Andrew created Southeast Paddle Sports to help paddlers through coaching instruction and being a distributor for paddling brands. Andrew is from Gainesville, GA and is attending Kennesaw State University for Construction Management.

Grant currently lives in Central Utah and the image is taken on Deer Creek Reservoir, with the east side of Mt Timpanogos in the background.

Growing up in New Zealand, Grant was surrounded by water and “dabbled” in many different water and land based sports.

Mike Wang has been a SUP racer since 2015, his first race was Battle of the Bay in San Francisco where he raced with 100 other racers under the Golden Gate Bridge against 7 knot current.

Mike founded Mike’s Paddle, a stand up paddle board school and shop in 2014 in Alameda, CA and has been working to advance the sport of SUP for the last 10 years. He has been a long time supporter of ACA as well as an instructor trainer for Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 (Coastal and SUP Surf). He has served on the ACA SUP sub-Committee as well as ACA SEIC committee. Mike has been a champion of other paddlers and instructors of diversity. He has mentored over dozens of paddlers in the last ten years, many of whom have become certified instructors in the Bay Area and beyond.

In his spare time, Mike created several race series in the Bay Area, some through Mike’s Paddle and others with collaborations. He helped and promoted PaddleSplash in Sacramento and Battle of the Bay in San Francisco, both of which are still going strong today.

In 2022, Mike became the treasurer and the director of DEI of USA SUP. Since then he has help organized the finance for USA SUP and its national races. The inaugural USA SUP National Championship was an amazing product of local and national paddling community.

Besides running a paddling shop and volunteering at ACA and USA SUP, Mike spends his time racing and surfing in the Bay Area with his wife Judy and his dog Yankee.

Dr. Cynowa is a practicing Neuro-Structural Chiropractor and owner of Complete Wellness Chiropractic in Tega Cay, South Carolina for the past 15 years. During the day Dr. Cynowa focuses on helping patients experience their optimal health potential in life through Chiropractic Care and Lifestyle Wellness.

In SUP, Rob Cynowa has a desire to bring a disjointed profession together, aligned and to its rightful place as an elite profession with worldwide well-known professional athletes that kids aspire to be.

In 2014 he was blindly thrust into the wild world of SUP through his wife Megan Cynowa. She is the creator and founder of The Goat Boater, an exceptional stand-up paddleboard company teaching safety, technique, fitness and competitive passion.

A stickler for rules, a nerd with tracking and unwavering desire to solve problems, Dr. Cynowa created The Goat Boater Race Series. Twenty races later the series has rather successfully aimed to subject standup paddlers to the different race disciplines in SUP in hopes to raise the next generation of racers prepared for anything. Race Series Vision: Creating a world class race experience with a grassroots feel.

Dr. Cynowa has brought his motivation and charisma into the profession not only through The Goat Boater Race series but through commentating. Dr. Cynowa has commentated nationally and internationally and feels that ‘emotion creates commotion’ and commotion gets noticed by advertisers and athletes alike.

Dr. Cynowa is a PaddleFit Pro certified coach, USA SUP Board Member, an International Technical Officiant for the ICF and an extreme sports competitive athlete including: Wakeboarding, Snowboarding, Skateboarding, SUP Baseball and Playing Big10 Volleyball at Michigan State University. A father of two incredible girls, Jade and River and a passion for live fire outdoor cooking.

With ACA SUP Competition Committee, Dr. Cynowa hopes to establish clear by-laws, rules for USA races to use as guidance and the means for picking the USA National Team each year. By creating a clear pathway for beginners to pro athletes to rise within the national ranks the USA can confidently know who the best of the best are when continuing on to international representation. The love of SUP is strong in the US, lets create clarity and love for the competition side too.