• Girls Who Surf
• Blue Crush
• Endless Summer
• Rash guards

Surfer Chicks

When she moved to Waikiki, HI, from Boston 4 years ago, Cherry Hu had never experienced the thrill of riding a wave. But she was quickly fascinated by the many surfers on the beach and spent a lot of time observing the surf schools that peppered the waterside. Female instructors, she noticed, were a rarity, and female students seemed to be holding themselves back.

"It was a guy's place," Hu says.

What's more, the classes sometimes seemed to be rather impersonal. But not for long. In April 2005, Hu, now an avid surfer, founded Girls Who Surf, a surf school designed for females who want to learn to surf with small groups of other like-minded women. The school offers 1- and 2-hour lessons daily, with intimate groups of just 2 to 3 students per (female) instructor to provide more hands-on teaching and attention.

"Other schools provide a thrill," says Hu, 26. "We provide a thrill and an education." The nearly 1-to-1 student/teacher ratio means that no girl finds herself lost in the waves. Indeed, students are given so much individual encouragement and attention that it's rare that one doesn't get up on a board by the lesson's end.

Who are these surfer girls? Hu says her clients range from 6-year-old girls to 65-year-old women. (The only prerequisite is being able to swim.) The school gets comparisons to Blue Crush, the 2002 female equivalent of Endless Summer, and Hu admits that part of the allure of surfing is that it is undeniably cool. Beyond its trendy factor, surfing is also a unique way to enjoy the ocean. And the way it works the core and upper body isn't a drawback either.

More important, the sport builds confidence, and Hu feels that her female-friendly environment encourages that.

"For women, just being able to [surf] is enough; they don't have to be awesome," she says. Men, she says, usually aren't so "que sera sera" about riding waves. "They get discouraged if they mess up and become really competitive."

Forty-year-old Gretchen Neuman of Chicago, IL, echoes that sentiment. Neuman and her 9- and 11-year-old daughters signed up for Girls Who Surf on a trip to Hawaii last April.

The fact that beginners can expect undivided attention at Girls Who Surf was the crucial selling point for Neuman and her daughters. She credits the personal attention from her instructor, Erica - who literally turned her around and guided her into a wave - as instrumental in getting her up on her board.

"Most of the schools that I researched seemed to push the macho end of the sport. But the Girls Who Surf [instructors seemed to] especially like teaching younger girls and people like me who would generally be considered a lost cause by other surfers," says Neuman who, along with her daughters, donned a "rash guard" (a shirt that will prevent bikini tops from coming off in the waves) and then spent an afternoon gamely attempting to emulate Gidget. Sure, she spent most of the time balancing on the board on her stomach while getting her knees sunburned, but she still had a blast. The experience wasn't just a lesson in wave riding . . . it was also a mother/daughter course in stick-to-it-iveness.

"[Surfing] is not a question of if you fall, but when," says Neuman. "So getting up and trying again is an essential part of the sport."

 

Posted on July 31, 2006