How do you get to Carlsbad Lagoon?

Practice. Just ask Maple Ridge’s Trevor Ermer.

Just 20 years old, Ermer is taking the wakeboarding world by storm after coming out of nowhere to place third at the Canadian Wakeboarding Championships last summer in Saskatchewan. It was his first shot at the national men’s title, and was a still relatively unknown commodity at the competition despite winning every event on the B.C. tour last year.

Ermer got his start on a wakeboard getting towed behind his dad’s tin can of fishing boat out on Hatzic Lake in Mission.

“My great grampa built a cabin out there by hand, so we used to spend a lot of time there,” says Ermer. “I was four years old when I first tried it, but I got up on my first try and I was hooked.”

Zia Cajee, owner of Rider Boardshop in Maple Ridge, first spotted Ermer’s potential at the wakeboarding school the shop runs on Alouette Lake, and decided to sponsor him.

“I was unknown until they got me going to contests,” says Ermer.

“They have been a huge help to get me where I am.”

For two years, Cajee worked with Ermer both in the water and out, even learning gymnastics and acrobatics in an effort to improve his aerial skills.

It’s paid off, it would seem.

“He progressed at a really fast rate,” says Cajee “There’s nobody really close to him in B.C. or Alberta.”

After dominating the B.C. tour in 2008, Ermer made his first appearance at the men’s nationals, winning a bronze medal. While the many sponsored pro riders from across Canada flew in to Regina for the event, Ermer drove.

“It was a long drive, but I didn’t have all the money and sponsorship the other guys did,” he says. “But I still beat a lot of them.”

It was an eye-opening experience for Ermer to compete against such a talented field.

“Some of the people there I really look up to,” he says. “It was great to compete against them.

His strong showing got him sponsoship deals with HO Watersports, Billabong clothing, and Ronix Wakeboards.

Thanks to his newfound sponsorship, Ermer is able to ride year round now, and spent this past winter honing his craft at wakeboarding’s birthplace, the Carlsbad Lagoon, north of San Diego.

His boards, clothes, gear and expenses are paid for, and he teaches wakeboarding at schools around the continent to earn his keep.

Ermer hopes to improve on his third-place finish in the open mens’ division at the elite Tige Pro-Am tournament in Portland, Oregon last June and claim gold at this year’s nationals.

“I’m just having fun, and travelling lots,” he says. “I’m taking it pretty seriously now, but it’s always been more of a lifestyle [than a career].”