Surfing’s ‘Trialists’ Shoot for Big Time

He is an 18-year-old high school dropout, a lone wolf, on his own, obsessed with breaking into the world of professional surfing.

She is 16, living with her parents, coddled in typical middle-class family style. But she, too, is driven by a desire to break into the world of pro surfing.

Meet Colby Outlaw and Nea Post. Their backgrounds are miles apart, but their ambitions have brought them together at the seventh annual Op Professional Surfing Championships this week in Huntington Beach.

“I know it’s going to be a grind, but I want to win,” said Post, a Huntington Beach High School junior who surfs as an amateur and wants to turn pro after graduation.

Outlaw couldn’t wait that long.

“I got my GED (graduate equivalent degree) during the 10th grade, and I’ve been surfing professionally since I was 15,” he said.

As competitors on the brink of surf stardom, Outlaw and Nea want their names to become household words. They want to sign with big-name sponsors and win big-contest prize money like the top-seeded pros.

Annual salaries for surfing’s top 30 pros ranged from $40,000 on up last year. Some, like Tom Curren, who sits at the top of surfing’s pyramid, make up to $500,000 a year, riding the crest of lucrative sponsorships for everything from surf apparel to, in Curren’s case, Alfa Romeo.

But for Nea and Outlaw, that is all still a dream. As unseeded competitors, the two young county surfers are still “trialists,” the surfing world’s label for that group of competitors who have to endure 6:30 a.m. qualifying heats and empty bleachers as they scratch and claw their way toward the money.

“Being a trialist means you can’t expect to win the contest or be in the race for the world title,” said Jeff Booth, 19, of Laguna Beach, who won his second qualifying heat on Thursday, giving him a chance today to face Barton Lynch, last year’s Op Pro contest winner. “But you want to peck away at it, get as much points as you can. You gotta go after each heat, one by one.”

Trialists all agree: The road to the top is tough.

Skip Qualifying Rounds

Unlike the trialists, the top-seeded pros, such as Lynch, Curren and others, skip the early qualifying rounds. They won seeded status by performing well in competition both this year and last.

For the top 16 men in the Huntington Beach competition this year, the surfing starts with today’s two-surfer heats. Trying to knock them off will be the 16 surfers who survived the trialist heats and the contests, which began Thursday, involving the competitors seeded lower than 16.

The finals are Sunday.

For the estimated 120 trialists, the heats began Tuesday, with four surfers battling in each 20-minute heat and just two advancing to the next heat. Five judges score the contestants in categories such as wave maneuver, length of ride and wave selection.

To win the right to face the best in the world, a trialist may have to fight through four or five heats.

“It’s a dog-eat-dog competition that builds character and makes scrappers out of us,” Booth said.

Survived Four Heats

Outlaw, who is from Huntington Beach, survived four heats, including back-to-back match-ups at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, before he was eliminated by an interference call Wednesday afternoon.

Not only were the heats exhausting, Outlaw said, but trialists rarely get the best surfing conditions in their qualifying rounds: “Sometimes there’s too much wind or it’s high tide. It’s always one thing or another.”

The women’s competition is slightly different. With fewer women competing, the top eight seeded women automatically enter the women’s main event, and they surf against the top eight women trialists.

The intimidation factor is high, said Nea, who has been surfing almost four years. Even though she recently won the U.S. National Amateur Championship for girls ages 13 to 17 in Hawaii, anxiety is a constant companion.

“Hey,” Nea said, “most of these surfers are traveling the world, surfing in Brazil one day and Australia the next. I’m still in school--so of course I get nervous.

“My weak point is my stomach because I get so nervous, so I do exercises that my mom told me would help. She said to bend my toes and try and lift my arms high and breathe in deeply. I do whatever helps.”

Many try to get to bed early, but their excitement level keeps them awake through the night.

Nea has a smooth surfing style that has brought praise that belies her youth. Daniel McQue, a spokesman for Ocean Pacific Sunwear Ltd., which sponsors the Op Pro contest, said Nea is an odds-on favorite to do well this year.

“She’s young, she’s good and she’s from Huntington Beach--which means she should get a lot of the audience backing her up when she’s in the water,” McQue said.

When she’s not in school, Nea practices surfing, she said, and tries to emulate her heroes, Tom Carroll and Tom Curren.

“They both are really unreal surfers and are always in good shape,” she said.

For Her, No Heroines

Any heroines? “Nope,” she said.

She placed first in both her heats and advanced to a heat today that pits her against Frieda Zamba, a former three-time world champion.

Nervous?

“Well, kind of,” Nea said. “But my mom says all I have to do is do my best.”

As it is for most young people in Huntington Beach, the lure of the Pacific Ocean was strong for both surfers. The message it sent, Outlaw said, was filled with the glory of winning surfing contests--”my love, my passion, I’m obsessed with it”--and the promise of big bucks.

His heroes include Richard Cranz from Australia, Curren and Rabbit Bartholomew--surfers, he said, with reputations for hot wave maneuvers and good attitudes for promoting the sport.

Outlaw has been surfing about seven years and has earned the sponsorship of Body Glove--which manufactures wet suits, beach wear and accessories--and Billa Bong, a major clothing label, to help pay living expenses. He rents a small apartment with a roommate in Huntington Beach about a block from the ocean.

At Least $20,000 for Tour

But the money is not enough to put him or other trialists on the world tour, allowing him to go head to head with surfing’s biggest stars in places like Australia, Brazil and Hawaii. The world tour requires at least $20,000 a year for travel, lodging and entry fees.

“I ain’t got it,” Outlaw said.

But he is committed, and in fact has earned a reputation among Huntington Beach’s so-called pier rats--surfers who frequent the pier--as a “crazed surfer.”

Outlaw’s typical morning consists of waking up with a primal scream, popping in a cassette tape of Guns and Roses, an L.A. rock band, on his stereo and singing the lyrics in a voice strong enough to shatter glass.

“Then I walk over to my surfboards and start smelling the wax and, man, I get turned on for surfing. I get so much satisfaction. It’s in my heart, and I just can’t explain it.”

For Outlaw, the Op Pro was to be a launching platform, a chance at the brass ring.

“I just needed to place high to make it to the semifinals,” he said.

It didn’t happen.

For Jeff Booth and Nea, though, the competition will continue today as they try to climb yet another rung on the competitive ladder.

As a reporter interviewed Booth earlier this week, a young surfer interrupted and asked him to autograph his T-shirt.

“Hey, I really like your style out there in the water, Jeff,” said Tyson Schilz, 14. “I’d like to learn to surf just like you.”

A trialist is born.