After the success of Red Bull’s snowboarding and skiing Bracket Reel last February, the company decided to enact a similar competition for surfing, and one of the eight teams selected to compete was UNCW’s own Frothers Surf Club.

The competition is over three weeks, and each week videos from competing schools go head-to-head, similar to the NCAA Final Four bracket style. The competition is all fan voting and whoever gets the most likes wins for that week.

UNCW Surf Team Captain Shane Burn was approached by Red Bull Student Brand Manager and UNCW Sophomore Josh McCoy about the competition after Burn won the Sweetwater contest with Red Bull earlier this past summer.

“It is a college surf team video contest that is strictly voting based,” Burn said. “We were given about two months to film and edit three videos and submit them to go head to head in three rounds against the seven other colleges.”

The team’s videographer, UNCW Film Studies Major Jacob Laham, said while in Mexico this summer, he and Burn had the opportunity to film their videos for the competition. The team has never had an opportunity to compete like this before, the team typically competes in non-filmed events.

Having won the East Coast Championships the past seven out of eight years and being ranked as high as second nationally, winning a competition like this could continue to the trend of dominant UNCW surf teams.

With a win their first week against University of Southern California, whose student body has 43,000 students, UNCW advances into next week. In addition, a Red Bull pro athlete picks their favorite edit out of each matchup and that team receives an extra 15% boost in votes. UNCW’s video was chosen this past week. Voting for the next video opened Monday.

“[For voting] if you google Red Bull Bracket Reel it comes up immediately,” Burn said, “and you just click right above the UNCW surf team video. All you have to do is be logged into Facebook.”

In order to win, McCoy said that it will be “about mobilizing voters to post on social media.” So far UNCW’s Student Government Association tweeted about the competition and Surf City Surf Shop in Wrightsville Beach posted about it on their Instagram page.

If UNCW wins all three rounds, the team, videographer, and campus brand manager will get an all-inclusive trip to Hawaii in order to get the “North Shore experience” with a couple of Red Bull pro athletes. They would get to surf with the sponsored athletes and there will be a Red Bull videographer there to make a short video about it. The second prize is a quiver of surf boards. The third prize is a viewing party hosted by Red Bull for three other schools chosen for best crash, best wave, and best ride clips.

To read more about the competition, visit redbullbracketreel.com.