LITTLE SURFER : 12-Year-Old Craig Etchegoyen Hopes He’ll Be Sitting on Top of the World by Catching Waves

Craig Etchegoyen was barely 2 years old when he set his toy surfboard on the edge of his parents’ swimming pool in Newport Beach, took a running start, jumped on the board and raced across the water.

“After a week, I could go from one end of the pool to the other,” he said.

His parents, Craig Sr., a former amateur surfer, and Sharon, a former gymnast, were amused as their son was with his new toy.

“We knew Craigie had incredible balance,” Etchegoyen Sr. said.

And he knew his son was a surfer.

By age 4, before most children can even swim, Etchegoyen already was learning how to surf in the ocean.

Three years later, he had mastered the fundamental turns and maneuvers.

And now, after eight years of waves and wipeouts, the 12-year-old Etchegoyen glides across the toughest surf in Southern California and Hawaii with the ease of a veteran.

For him, surfing has become more than amusement, or even a sport. It is his life style.

“Surfing is all I do,” said Etchegoyen, who now lifes in Corona del Mar. “I have all my fun when I’m surfing. I want to be great at something, and I know I have to work hard at it. It’s like the Olympic gymnasts. All those kids have been doing it since they were 3. They spend hours working at it, and that’s how they get into the Olympics and win gold medals.”

Etchegoyen Sr. said his son has focused all of his goals on surfing. He’s the only one of six Etchegoyen children to take to the sport.

“He’s never had a regimented athletic program besides surfing,” Etchegoyen Sr. said. “That can hurt in a family environment. It creates such individualism. It creates the thought of ‘It’s just the surfboard, the waves and me.’ A lot of surfers are like that.”

But few surfers stand 4-feet-7, have a 3.9 grade-point average on a 4.0 scale, regulated training diets and corporate sponsors who pay for equipment and trips.

All this attention and money whirls like a swell around a pint-sized boy with sandy-blond hair, freckles and gallons of potential.

After just two years of surfing competitively, Etchegoyen already is approaching the 50-victory mark. He has so many trophies that he has to store them in boxes.

Etchegoyen is ranked second in the nation in his age group, has won 70% of competitions he has entered and has missed only one final. He’s hoping to add another victory this week at the U.S. Surfing Championships at Oceanside.

One could call Etchegoyen the Todd Marinovich of surfing. Just as Marinovich--now at USC--was nurtured to be a college quarterback at Mater Dei and Capistrano Valley high schools, Etchegoyen is surrounded by coaches, trainers and specialists to help him reach his goal of becoming a world-champion surfer.

All of Etchegoyen’s surfboards, which stand 5-foot-1 and weigh only four pounds, are shaped by hand. Every year, he goes through 15 to 20 boards and 10 custom-made wet suits. Sponsors pay for his clothing, contest entries and travel, which includes as many as seven trips to Hawaii each year.

Sponsors invest nearly $25,000 a year in Etchegoyen, his father said.

But his training goes much further than equipment and sponsors. A nutritionist monitors his diet, which consists of high-carbohydrate foods, fruits and vegetables. Red meats and junk food are strictly off limits, but Etchegoyen is prone to sneak a chicken fajita on occasion.

Etchegoyen has to watch his diet. He ballooned to a pudgy 90 pounds at age 7 but now weighs in at a trim 78.

“He understands that he can’t starve himself,” Etchegoyen Sr. said. “He eats in the morning, even when he’s not hungry.”

His son burns most of his energy at the beach. He works out alone three times a week, trains with the Quiksilver surfing team twice a week and spends one day competing in team contests. He takes one day to rest.

Etchegoyen Sr. says Quiksilver coaches do a better job of training his son than he did. A semi-retired land developer, he still attends workouts regularly and accompanies his son to contests.

“My dad really worked hard at this,” Etchegoyen said. “He still does. It’s almost as if his whole schedule revolves around me. Dad has taught me about how everything goes with the current and the side currents.”

Etchegoyen Sr. said he put too much pressure on his son when he was training him.

“I’m a high-energy guy,” Etchegoyen Sr. said. “But that turns into nerves with him. The Quiksilver coaches handle him like he was one of their children. He’s like one of the family, but they don’t spoil him.”

Quiksilver Team Manager Richard Woolcott, who has coached Etchegoyen for 1 1/2 years, said Etchegoyen has “world championship potential.”

“He works his butt off in surfing,” Woolcott said. “He’s a good kid. He has a good head on his shoulders and you don’t see that very often, especially in surfing.

“His whole life he’s been building himself to become a top competitive surfer. He’s born and bred to be one.”

Etchegoyen merely shrugs when asked about his potential.

“People will see the improvement in my surfing,” he said.

Even 12-year-olds can be modest.

More than just his father and coach realize Etchegoyen’s potential. At a recent team banquet, Quiksilver members voted Etchegoyen the most likely to be the next Tom Carroll, the two-time pro world champion.

“I hope to follow in his footsteps,” Etchegoyen said. “But I don’t want to be him. I want my own style. But it wouldn’t be bad to be a two-time world champion.”

All the grooming and sponsorship could pay off 10-fold when Etchegoyen joins the professional ranks. He should turn pro sometime between 16 and 18, Etchegoyen Sr. said.

Top pro surfers can earn as much as $300,000 to $400,000 a year.

“By the time Craigie turns pro,” his father said, “they’ll be making a half-million bucks a year.”

But first, Etchegoyen must pay a different kind of debt. He trained at Rocky Point, Hawaii, for two weeks last year and will work out on the islands as many as seven times this year.

“The trouble with a lot of kids is they’re not paying their dues in Hawaii,” Woolcott said. “But his dad has all corners covered. He’s around the right people in the industry. He’s right on target.”

Etchegoyen has avoided any serious injury while surfing, despite a sometimes kamikaze approach. When he started trying aerial maneuvers when he was 8, his father had to stop him. Too much. Too soon.

“He’s fast and powerful,” Etchegoyen Sr. said. “He has unbelievable timing. He has never hesitated from trying anything. Sometimes he’s too courageous. It scares me.”

Etchegoyen Sr. said his son “is totally unmotivated competing against kids his own age.”

Woolcott believes Etchegoyen can polish his existing skills. But he fears Etchegoyen could be burned out before he turns pro.

“Sometimes there’s too much pressure put on him,” he said. “He can get really bummed out if doesn’t do well in a final. But I tell him, ‘Hey, surfing is a life style. You should never get upset when you lose.’ For him, it’s all or nothing, and that’s not good for someone his age.

“We must give him a lot of (room). We want to push him, but we also want him to enjoy the sport.”

Woolcott said Etchegoyen’s only weaknesses is his upper-body strength.

“He’s so small can’t keep up with bigger guys paddling,” Woolcott said. “So he can’t get as good of a wave selection. Once he’s able to get wave quota, he’ll be unstoppable.”

Woolcott, 23, is patient with Etchegoyen because he surfed at the same level only a decade before. He placed third in the world amateur championships in 1984, but his career was cut short when he broke his neck in a surfing accident a year later.

“It’s hard to drill into a kid his age,” Woolcott said. “But his surfing will change over the next few years. He has the foundation. He just needs to do his maneuvers with more power.”

Etchegoyen’s success already has drawn national attention. He was featured on a national sports program last spring and will appear on the cover of Young People Today, a new children’s magazine, this fall.

“We have to make sure that this doesn’t go to his head,” Etchegoyen Sr. said. “He receives an enormous amount of attention. People run up to him on the beach and ask about him. He’s a little celebrity on these beaches.”

Etchegoyen wants to use that status to project an image of clean-cut surfers. He said he’s irritated by the stereotype of surfers as lazy, unemployed drug users with long hair and bad grades.

“That’s what really makes me mad,” he said. “People don’t project the right image about surfing. There are still people who go on TV and act weird. And that’s what people put in their minds. People think they all do drugs and go out and party all night.

“Many surfers own businesses. They’re athletes and they take the sport seriously. I don’t talk weird and say ‘dude’ all the time. I never did drugs and never will. I fit the image of a surfer who has fun.”

And one who keeps winning.