Horizontal Hold : O.C. Bodyboarders Get a Lot of Grief From Surfers, but They Don’t Take It Lying Down

Getting up at six a.m. is tough enough. But also dealing with abusive strangers who snarl threats while submerged in numbing, salty water really doesn’t sound like fun.

Which might question the sanity of Huntington Beach High School seniors Ryan Dowe and Shannon Henry. As bodyboarders, they consider this daily ritual a way of life. They have to put up with mostly older folks on surfboards who call them names like door mats, sponges, speed bumps or, to really rile, Boogie boarders (that’s a cheesy term among serious bodyboard riders).

Surfers, too, get up mighty early to ride the waves. But as far as they’re concerned, that’s where the comparison stops. Many surfers insist that bodyboarders are like oil in water. Their superiority stance runs even among some who support bodyboarding, like HBHS surf team coach Andy Verdone--who counts six bodyboarders in his class of 75. “Human beings evolved when they came out of the ocean and stood up,” he quips. “By going back in and laying down (bodyboarders) are being counter-evolutionary.”

Those young rebels.

They also dare to resist the attitude that surfers always get the right of way. So what if surfboards are bigger? (Bodyboards tend to run 43 inches or shorter in length and are usually made of a soft flexible, plastic foam.) The rectangular shape lacks the tapered tail and pointy nose of surfboards, but it’s better suited to piercing a tube, considered the ultimate achievement in general wave riding.

One longtime surfer considers bodyboarding a beginner’s sport, where only entry-level skills are required.

Says Eric Fairbanks, editor of the San Clemente-based Bodyboarding magazine: “It is easier to learn than surfing, and you don’t need that much equipment.” A board can cost as little as $30 or as much as $110.

“A lot of surfers today probably started out as bodyboarders, so there’s a growing acceptance. But it’s more among the grommets (younger surfers). Advances in board design and materials have also encouraged more guys to stay with bodyboarding because you can have high performance,” he says.

“It’s just a different way of riding a wave,” says Ryan, 18, one of coach Verdone’s “radist” bodyboarders.

He tried surfing and bodyboarding after his family moved to Huntington Beach from Cypress in his freshman year but preferred the latter as more fun. He moved from team alternate to competition rank last year and visits the Pacific at least twice a day when the conditions are right. “As soon as we paddle out, (surfers) give us bad vibes,” Ryan continues. “I don’t understand it, frankly. We’re just out there trying to have a good time.”

His teammates are pretty cool about his choice of board; still, the HBHS senior has encountered animosity from surfers he doesn’t know.

Like the time he was on the north side of the pier and a long-boarder railed over his board and came within inches of his head. “He didn’t even apologize, and it was his fault,” Ryan says. “He just cussed me out and wanted to fight. Luckily, one of my friends, a surfer, was nearby and told him to cool down.”

Ryan considers himself lucky for never getting hit. Less fortunate is Shannon, who has had to defend his way of life in minor beach brawls. “A lot of times it was just to help out a friend,” recalls Shannon, 18. “Nobody should be messing with us just because we bodyboard, so why should we take it when they do?”

He continues: “They say ‘how hard can it be to ride on your belly?’ Yeah, it’s easy to ride on your belly, but it’s not easy to do all the tricks.”

There are 360 aerials, power-roll moves and, Ryan’s favorite, the “through the lip el rolo.” That trick involves riding the wave and, when the lip pitches, flowing with it and catching air. “If it’s done right,” says Ryan, “you roll with the wave and get thrown away from it and land out in front.”

Nor are they restricted to vertical riding, as surfers are. Shannon has mastered riding with one leg kneeling underneath and the other positioned forward and bent.

“I haven’t personally been vibed too bad, because I’m out here a couple of times every day,” says Shannon, who first learned to surf at age 11 from his brother, a professional surfer. He took up bodyboarding a couple of years later after receiving 50 stitches to his leg from a surfboard cut.

“It’s mostly the older guys who get upset; I guess because it’s a younger sport they’re not used to.”

Although bodyboarding has been around since 1971, when Tom Morey introduced his foam creation on the Fourth of July, it was not regarded as a competitive sport until the mid-’80s, when a professional circuit was organized, according to Bodyboarding’s Fairbanks. As a result, most bodyboarders are between 13 and 19, in contrast to surfers who, according to the Surf Industry Manufacturers Assn., are mostly between 18 and 34.

The purse is still not as big as for surfing, but the circuit has spawned an industry, including wet suit labels, videos and 22 board manufacturers in the United States alone. Corona del Mar-based SIMA estimates 500,000 bodyboards were sold in 1993--double the number of surfboards.

As for any negative attitudes, Fairbanks says it “has to do with the tendency to associate bodyboarding with the less experienced inlanders who paddle out and get in the way”--wanna-bes who to Shannon and Ryan are not part of the scene. But they are the reason why hard boards are blackballed from the south side of the pier in the summertime, which on the upside, gives Ryan, Shannon and his buds an area free of aggravated surf snobs.

Fairbanks cites another possible factor in the growing popularity of bodyboarding. It fits teens’ perennial search for the alternative: “Part of the appeal is also that it’s a subculture to the culture of surfing.”

Just an earful of Ryan and Shannon’s war stories, paired with the more-bitchin’-than-thou attitudes of surfers, really makes bodyboarders look like the underdogs of wave riding. Shannon and Ryan are hesitant to use that term, saying that the constant comments, threats and hard vibes just encourage them more to be rad.

“Sometimes I want to say ‘screw it,’ so I take off for a few days,” says Ryan, who along with Shannon will compete next month in the National Scholastic Surfing Assn. contest. “But I never say quit. It makes us more aggressive out in the water.”

“We love what we do,” he continues. “I try to stay out of people’s way, because I don’t like to get into a hassle. But you got to be aggressive if you want to get any waves. Being in the minority doesn’t really bother me. You get used to what people say and just shrug it off.”