The Water’s Fine : Summer Camps Cater to Beginning Surfers

For the others, toting surfboards through the sand was a piece of cake. But 8-year-old Shawn Tierney had to strain every muscle to lug the giant surfboard that dwarfed him.

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Maybe someday, the Huntington Beach boy will look back on the Summer of ’95 as one of the best. But on a recent weekday, as Shawn participated in the first day of Super Surf Camp here, it looked more like work than fun.

“This is my first time surfing ever in my life,” Shawn said as he reached the water and prepared for the next struggle, to propel himself into the surging surf. “I’ve been on a swim team before, but this is different.”

Welcome to Surfology 101: people of all ages paying $185 to $800 a week at various Orange County surf camps to pursue their dreams of slipping into the blue Pacific and sliding across a wave.

There are the Paskowitz Camp run by a famous surfing clan at San Onofre State Beach, the Endless Summer Surf Camp operated by prominent surfer Mary Lou Drummy of San Clemente, and others sprinkled up and down the coast. They offer weeklong instruction, with overnight lodging or at day camps. Camp instructors teach not only surfing technique but safety, surf culture and reading the ocean.

At the Super Surf Camp, the operation is equipped with plenty of surfboards and each student gets a wet suit for use the entire week.

Joshua Stoops, 11, of Chino Hills comes out of the water with a grin.

“I’ve got my own surfboard,” he says. “I’ve been able to get up on it a coupla times. But with this bigger board, it was so easy to stand up and you can just stand there and it goes!”

Sessions begin at 9 a.m. and run until 3 p.m., Monday through Friday. Once each camper selects a surfboard, chief instructor Chris Koerner, 37, of Dana Point, asks them to arrange the boards “nose first” in a semicircle facing him.

For Aaron Baughman, 10, of San Clemente, finding the nose--the front of the surfboard--is the first lesson.

“I just put the board there, OK?” Baughman says, asking Aron Yehuda, 9, of Anaheim, for aid. “Can you help me move this around?”

Once all the noses are pointed in one direction, Koerner instructs the class regarding the surfboard’s parts, water safety and the art of standing up.

The camps are not just for youngsters but for the young at heart. Laura Ehlers, an adventurous 38-year-old mother of two from Long Beach, said she became interested by way of her two sons.

“I’m doing this because my two sons surf a lot,” Ehlers said. “I wanted to see what this was all about. It looked like fun.”

Hesitatingly, Ehlers entered the water and smoothly paddled out on a surfboard to gentle breakers. As a series of swells rolled in, Ehlers positioned the board toward shore.

After she made a few short strokes, a wave picked up the surfboard and within moments she and the board were being hurled across the water. She lifted herself up, planted both feet beneath her and, for a few brief moments, was surfing on her first try.

Ten minutes later, Ehlers came in wearing a 1,000-megawatt smile.

“You know, when you’re on a board waiting for a wave, the water picks your board up and it’s like floating you toward shore, like on air,” Ehlers said. “It’s like flying.”

Super Surf Camp is operated at Sunset and Salt Creek county beaches by Herb White and Jim Balok, both of Huntington Beach. Both are lifeguards for the state, but have run summer junior lifeguard programs privately for many years.

The weekly surf camps fill a niche, White said.

“Most of our junior lifeguard programs run for several weeks,” White said. “But a lot of parents wanted a shorter format and we did market research and found there were not any surf camps for the north Orange County area.”

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White said they teach basic surfing and ocean safety.

“One thing we do differently is, we advertise in parenting magazines and publications for children,” White said. “Very few other camps have targeted this market. Most target the surfing magazines.”

At all camps, instruction is lively and fun is on the agenda.

“I remember with one group of youngsters we had a dry spell where no sizable waves were coming through,” Koerner said. “Well, I had the group believing that the oil derricks out there were big wave machines. When the dry spell hit, I told them, ‘We aren’t getting waves today because I haven’t paid the electrical bill.’ ”

Koerner has been a lifeguard for 17 years in Australia and the United States. During that time, he has seen beginners make the classic error of buying a surfboard much too small for them and then paddling out in the wrong area, because they didn’t have proper instruction.

“I’ve seen them go inside a surf shop with a parent in tow,” Koerner said, “buy a bright new shiny surfboard that is the wrong size for them, and then go surfing the same day at the Huntington Beach Pier, or at Salt Creek, where conditions and the atmosphere are not appropriate for beginners.”

Veteran surfer Jason Haughey, 28, of Huntington Beach, a top West Coast professional, said that too often “grommets”--pint-size surf dudes who live for the waves--believe that buying a board gives them “credentials” to surf where they please, when they please.

“You know why they call the area right next to the Huntington Pier the War Zone?” Haughey asked. “It’s named that because that’s the best wave in Huntington Beach.”

“It’s very cutthroat out there,” Haughey said, “because everybody wants the best wave and they think they deserve it.”