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“I’m alive and well and I feel great,” announces North Shore surfer Koa Rothman at the top of his latest YouTube video. Why would he have to clarify that? Because he almost died at Pipe two weeks ago.
In the rest of the video, he walks through the timeline of the accident that landed him in the hospital with a concussion and 21 stitches in his face. After straightening out at the end of a ride at the notoriously dangerous wave, Koa was bucked off by the whitewater and hit his head on the bottom. From there, he took another wave on the head before being promptly being retrieved by none other than Luke Shepardson, the North Shore lifeguard who won the 2023 Eddie Aikau invitational.
Since it’s common for concussion sufferers to experience retrograde amnesia (in which they forgot not only the events directly after, but also before an injury) Koa’s memory of the event starts on the sand. “I came to on the beach on a stretcher, in a neck brace, with all the lifeguards above me,” he said. From there he was stabilized and taken in an ambulance to the hospital. Shockingly, apart from some lingering effects from the concussion and the aforementioned stitches, he emerged from the injury relatively unscathed.
“It was definitely a scary experience, but I’m fine,” said Rothman of the ordeal. “I’m doing good and I’ll be back in the water in the next couple days.”
Watch the entire episode here.
