Growing older — and slower — can be particularly vexing for surfers, whose sport demands speed, agility and power in the ever-changing arena of the sea.

Nevertheless, former professional surfer Ross Williams, 46, wakes up every morning in his Pupukea home with surfing on the brain, just as he did in his youth.

“The first thing I think is, how are the conditions? Can I squeeze in a surf?” said the father of three young daughters who grew up on Oahu’s North Shore. A career surfing commentator, he has coached two-time world champion John John Florence since 2017.

Williams and his friend Benji Weatherley have been reflecting on youth and maturity, relationships and values since they appeared in the 2018 documentary “Momentum Generation” about the close-knit but highly competitive group of young surfers who bonded at Weatherley’s family home on the shore at Pipeline in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Other group members in the film are Kelly Slater, Rob Machado, Shane Dorian, Taylor Knox, Kalani Robb, Pat O’Connell and Taylor Steele, whose raw, grainy VHS “Momentum” surf videos with punk-rock soundtracks first branded the group.

The film includes cameos of other friends and mentors such as the late big-wave surfers Brock Little and Todd Chesser and 2000 world champion Sunny Garcia, who was last reported as being in critical condition in a Portland, Ore., hospital after having been found unconscious April 29.

Just as its subjects took surfing and its culture to new heights, “Momentum Generation,” directed by Jeff and Michael Zimbalist, transcends the surf film genre and engages a new, mainstream audience.

A full-length documentary feature that combines thrilling surf footage with a dramatic story arc, it debuted on the HBO Sports network in December and has been nominated for Sports Emmys for outstanding long sports documentary and outstanding music direction. The awards ceremony will be held Monday in New York.

A band of surfing brothers

Widely nominated for awards in the U.S. and internationally, “Momentum Generation” won best feature at the Aspen Filmfest and best inspirational film at the L.A. Film Awards. It also received a runner-up audience award at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York.

It’s a classic coming-of-age tale: A courageous band of brothers launches a quest to become the best surfers ever by proving themselves at Pipeline, considered the most dangerous wave in the world. The film, which covers a 30-year span, poses the question: Is winning worth giving up love, friendship and happiness?

Growing up in Florida, Hawaii, California and elsewhere, as Slater (the record-holding 11-time world champion), Dorian, Knox, Weatherley and others recount in individual interviews, they felt anger at abusive or absent fathers. But, as shown in snippets of home movies spliced in by the Zimbalists, they found escape and a sense of accomplishment as they learned to surf and began to compete at junior events, thrilled to win money and product sponsorships.

Thanks to Barbara Weatherley, who welcomed her son Benji’s friends to hang out, raid the fridge and stay for weeks, if needed, in her rented home that became their clubhouse, the kids had a supportive environment. “Our bond as a family enabled us to become successful,” Williams says in the documentary.

Encouraged by Little and Chesser, they took ever bigger and gnarlier waves, egging each other on and critiquing each other’s performances in Steele’s home videos.

Speaking by phone from Los Angeles, Jeff Zimbalist likened his subjects’ approach to being interviewed to their surfing. After an interview, “They’d get online with the (text) thread and write what they went through, this psychological process,” Zimbalist said. “As if one had said he’d just surfed a 60-foot wave, the other guys would get prepared and they would come to the interview really ready to go there, push themselves.”

The story climaxes with the 1997 death of Chesser in big waves near Waimea Bay. He had stood to them for pure surfing, ridiculing those who lusted for money and fame. His loss at age 28 devastated the group, their sorrow resonating in their voices and faces decades later. Particularly devastating are the interviews with his mother, Jeannie Chesser, and fiancee Janet Rollins.

At the time, while the group had overcome physical fears, they were afraid of sharing their emotions, equating vulnerability with weakness. The film depicts them growing apart for a time as rivalries escalated on tour and off.

While some continue to excel as professional big-wave or free surfers, they’ve all left the world championship tour, except for Slater, at 46 the oldest contestant by far.

Family and friendship

“Weird thing — Kelly just won his heat (in the championship contest at Keramas, Bali),” Williams said Thursday at Breakers, Weatherley’s family restaurant in Haleiwa, where Weatherly had just posed for a photo with a group of young admirers. They were nonsurfers, he said, like most of the visitors who have been pouring into his restaurant every day because of the film.

The two friends laughed and cheered for Slater, who has helped keep the group in touch over the years by initiating their 32-person text thread and hosting their most recent reunion on the North Shore, with which “Momentum Generation” culminates.

Lately, texting about Garcia as they hope for his recovery “has made things almost bearable,” Weatherley said. He and Williams remembered how, starting out, they were careful to show respect for Garcia, Johnny Boy Gomes, Dane Kealoha and other powerful surfers who dominated Pipeline.

“We put the time in and earned those waves,” Williams said, and Garcia, at first skeptical, befriended them.

On the wall of the restaurant hung a black-and-white photo from the late ’90s of Garcia looking on as Slater draws a new sponsor’s logo on Garcia’s board. “Sunny had just gotten sponsored by Blue Hawaii and he didn’t have a sticker yet,” Weatherley said.

Part of their growing apart for a time, Williams said, was simply that they matured, got busy with new careers, marriage and children.

The two friends bemoaned their age; they can’t go out there and pull aerial maneuvers like they used to at 27.

Weatherley, 43, recalled a morning before school when he was 13 and caught a nice wave at Gums east of Pipeline, “got a barrel, some maneuvers. Ross and Shane were on the beach watching; they were already pro surfers and they told me I was going to be (one).”

“I remember that day,” Williams said with a smile.

“On the school bus,” Weatherley continued, “I said to Jack Johnson (the surfer-musician has a cute cameo in the film) — Jack was already sponsored — ‘I’m going to be a pro surfer,’ and Jack said, ‘I don’t know.’”

Weatherley did go pro. Today, he and his wife are planning to start a family, and “I know when I can start teaching (our kid), I’ll fall in love with surfing again,” he said.

He and Williams spoke with admiration of the way the Zimbalists had focused a multiple-protagonist story on family and friendship in a universal, camaraderie-vs.-competition theme.

“The beauty of what the Zimbalists did is they made sense of it all,” Steele agreed in a phone interview. “It brought us closer together at the end of the day, almost therapeutic in a way, closing chapters, forgiving and remembering each other.”

Williams had one caveat: Although he knew the Zimbalists deliberately had set out not to make a surf film, he still wanted to see more surfing in it.

“Once a surfer, always a surfer,” Williams said, as Weatherley stood up to greet another group of “Momentum Generation” fans who asked for him as they came in the door.