Update:

3:15: Courtney Conlogue won her second heat of the day. While the waves weren’t as good as in the morning, she earned enough points to move on to the next round. She has three more heats until the finals on Saturday.

Orange County’s Courtney Conlogue slashed her way through her early afternoon heat during the women’s competition today, catching wave after wave to win and move forward in the contest.

“Courtney is pretty much finding any wave that comes through. You can really see that local knowledge,” said announcer Brooke Farris over the loudspeaker. “She just finds herself in the right spot each time.”

Conlogue, 16 from Santa Ana, earned a score of 14.84, and took more than a dozen waves during the 25-minute heat.

“It feels really good,” she said of advancing. “I just went out there and had fun.”

It was a needed boost for Conlogue, who got knocked out of the women’s junior competition earlier in the week. She said that loss will be needed ammo to feed her motivation for the women’s competition.

“Hopefully I can use it to get my game face on,” she said.

Conlogue said she’s excited about the big waves expected for this weekend, expecting to be the biggest Orange County has seen in years.

Fan Katie Dills, here from Tahoe, stopped Conlogue as she got out of the water to snap a photo with her.

“She was just ripping out there today,” Dills said. “I’m definitely going to follow her career from now on.”

Conlogue will be surfing again in heat 12 later today, or see her at the OC Surfer of the Year awards (she won for Rising Star Females) Thursday in front of Jack’s Surfboards during the Walk of Fame.

Get more coverage - slideshows, video, results and more.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.