Local Kiteboarding Community

LOCAL SCENE: At Action Sports we have built a community of kiteboarders around our love for the sport. As the first school we have taken on a responsibility to the community to make the sport safer, and to foster responsible kiteboarding practices. We helped create a working system on Maui whereby kiteboarding can be enjoyed alongside the traditional watersports, and integrate with the wider community. As pioneers and early promoters of kiteboarding we established high safety standards and solid techniques that we shared with the local kiteboarders, that became the blueprint for the lesson program as well as the local kiting guidelines. The Safe kiting guidelines were adopted by the local kitesurfing community that eventually became the basis for the local rules and the formation of our local kiteboarding association. We are proud to be a part of a vital and diverse community of watersports lovers that call Maui home. Our goal was to create a sense of camaraderie, and cooperation in the Ocean. Where kiteboarders would watch out for each other, and be a safety net for each other. Kiteboarders today are a fairly self sufficient bunch, that take care of their own. The sense of seamanship and survival skills we have passed along to our students and friends, have multiplied and become the common elements of kiteboarding technique and etiquette in the community. Promoting safety and education, became the responsibility of the wider kiting community and became its own entity that provides information and support for the sport here on Maui. Action Sports is still an active supporter of the Maui Kiteboarding Association, and other community projects like Adopt a Beach, and Community Work Day coastal cleanups, and other environmental endeavors. Every year Action Sports provides kite rescue training to the Maui County Lifeguards. Our instructor training programs and lifeguard training exercises are combined several times per year to increase the ability of the lifeguards to respond to kiteboarding emergencies with the jet skis.  We have also cross trained many county lifeguards on kiting safety, some of whom have gone onto become avid kiters themselves.  As the sport has matured we have also given a lot of attention to the younger kids and created special programs and camps and clinics to encourage youth in kiting. We are supporters of charity events to raise money for island youth programs. and have summer kids camps. Recently our programs for promoting Women in kiting have really taken off, and we hold regular camps, clinics and seminars to promote women in kiting.