Column: Chiasa Maruyama’s father shapes surfboards and her surfing future

Taichi Maruyama came up a little short of his dream of becoming a pro surfer, so shaping became his thing.

“Shaping,” in this case, has a sort of a double meaning. He shapes surfboards as a hobby, including the boards used by his 16-year-old daughter Chiasa. He also has been instrumental in shaping a potential professional surfing career for Chiasa, if she continues on her current path.

Maruyama is a junior at Huntington Beach High School and already has put together an impressive surfing resume. She finished fourth in girls’ shortboard in the National Scholastic Surfing Assn. National Championships as a freshman, then repeated her fourth-place showing last year as a sophomore.

She competes extensively in the NSSA and Western Surfing Assn., and she has participated in two Qualifying Series contests in the World Surf League, which is one level below the Championship Tour. She surfed in the Los Cabos Open of Surfing in Mexico in June, then four months later in the White Buffalo Women’s Open in Chiba, Japan.

But it wasn’t always that way.

“My dad was trying to become a professional surfer but he couldn’t because he started out really late, like 18, and so that was his dream,” Maruyama said. “He couldn’t accomplish that goal of his, so he wanted me to become a professional surfer. So I started when I was 4.

“When I first started surfing, it was kind of forced upon me. It was my dad’s dream, not my dream. But I think I didn’t have fun with the sport at the beginning because I didn’t have friends [who surfed] and I didn’t notice it that much. When I joined the surf club in middle school [at Dwyer], that’s when I started to make friends through surfing and that’s how I started to enjoy the sport.”

And when surfing was temporarily taken away from her, that’s when she knew how much it meant to her.

“I got really sick for like two weeks and I couldn’t surf at all, and I just remember how excited I was to get back in the water after recovering from that,” Maruyama said. “That’s when I knew, ‘Oh this is what I want to do.’”

Andy Verdone, Huntington Beach’s surf coach, is happy to have her, another high-level surfer on a program that has won 18 national championships, the last one coming in 2016.

But Verdone is impressed by more than Maruyama’s surfing ability.

“You can’t just study her surfing,” Verdone said. “She’s a study of perfection in anything she does. She’s a perfect student, perfect citizen, perfect human being. She’s amazing. I’d love my daughter to grow up and be just like her.”

But coach, tell us how you really feel.

“All her teachers love her, her coaches love her. She’s an incredible human being,” said Verdone, who finally relented and admitted Maruyama might not be perfect.

“She wants it all now,” he said. “If I had to give her any advice, I’d say pump the brakes a little and be the best in Huntington, which she is.”

Maruyama, though, can’t help but look beyond the now, and has her sights set on more than conquering Huntington Beach. In fact, she’s looking at the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Japan.

Maruyama, who has dual citizenship with the U.S. and Japan, wants to compete for Japan in the next Olympic Games.

“If I really want compete in the Olympics for Japan, I have to choose to become a Japanese citizen [and relinquish my U.S. citizenship],” she said. “When I’m 18 I have to choose between the two. I actually would like to compete for the Japanese team because they definitely have a lot of good surfers. They’re all younger and around my age and I know all of them. I think I have a better chance of being on the team there.”

It won’t simply be a matter of trying out for the Japanese national team, however. When she turns 18, she’ll have to begin training and competing with the Japanese team.

“They have their own system of having to compete in their competitions,” she said. “I can’t just pop out of nowhere and say, ‘Oh I want to be on the team.’”

When she was there for a contest in October, Maruyama got a chance to surf the wave in Chiba, Japan, the site of the Olympic contest. It’s also home to many of her relatives.

Whether or not she qualifies for the Olympics, she is going full speed ahead toward a professional career with the hopes of qualifying for the CT. In the women’s division, only 17 surfers can qualify each year.

And right beside her along the way will be Taichi, who himself is learning what it takes to be successful in such a competitive sport.

“When I was younger he was that super strict dad, always yelling at me,” said Maruyama, who is sponsored by Hurley, HSS and Sun Bum. “But he doesn’t do that anymore. He noticed himself and became a better coach for me and he’s been my coach throughout my whole surfing career, and he still is.

“He is 100 percent supporting me, telling me he’ll support me no matter what, since I’ve shown my commitment to the sport.”

No longer does Taichi have to prod Maruyama to get in the water. Now, surfing is a big part of who she is.

“Surfing is such a unique sport, it’s not like any other,” she said. “It’s so diverse, the waves, the culture. The people you meet through surfing and the places you get to go through traveling is what makes the sport so difficult to master, but that’s also what makes it so amazing.”

Say it ain’t so

My last column explored the pros and cons of the developing wave pool industry. In short, I concluded wave pools are good for training and coaching, and for providing waves for people in landlocked areas, but bad for high level competitions — the waves and conditions are too predictable for such high level surfers.

But the WSL announced this past week that the Kelly Slater Surf Ranch would be the site of one of the 11 men’s CT events next year. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the contest at Slater’s wave pool in the Central California farming town of Lemoore will replace the contest at Lower Trestles. The contest at Lowers — the Hurley Pro — was the only contest on the U.S. mainland.

It seems all the WSL employees, surfers included, are saying nothing but good things about the decision. But the comments section on the surfline.com story announcing the move seems to reflect disdain for the idea. Here is one of the comments:

“Trestles is going to be 6 feet and pumping and all the pros will be in Bakersfield (sic). Ha ha ha ha Dream Tour.”

The women also will have a CT contest in Lemoore, replacing the Swatch Women’s Pro at Lowers. The women, though, still have a local CT contest with the U.S. Open of Surfing in Huntington.

Simpo shreds

Huntington Beach’s Brett Simpson had a good showing at the Hawaiian Pro this week, the first contest that is part of the Vans Triple Crown of Surfing. The others are the Vans World Cup of Surfing (at Sunset Beach) and Billabong Pipe Masters (at the Banzai Pipeline) that will be held in the next few weeks.

Simpson won his four-man Round 1 heat, won his four-man Round 2 heat, took second in his four-man Round 3 heat, but was eliminated in Round 4, placing third, less than one point from second place and advancing.

The Hawaiian Pro was good for San Clemente local Griffin Colapinto, who reached the final and placed second to winner Filipe Toledo. Colapinto, 19, has qualified for next year’s CT, joining fellow San Clemente native Kolohe Andino.

The only other Californians on the men’s CT are Huntington Beach’s Kanoa Igarashi and Santa Barbara’s Conner Coffin. While Igarashi has already requalified for next year’s CT, Coffin is on the bubble. He is currently ranked No. 21 on the CT and needs to finish in the top 22 to requalify, with one CT contest left — the Billabong Pipe Masters starting Dec. 8.

JOE HAAKENSON is a Huntington Beach-based sports writer and editor. He may be reached at joe@juvecreative.com.