Beck No Longer Surfing Under Cover of Darkness

Five years ago, Holly Beck couldn’t even stand up on a surfboard, let alone stand one on end in an aerial maneuver during a professional contest.

Three years ago, she and a couple of high school surf team friends sent unsolicited pictures to a surfwear manufacturer on a lark. Last month, she took time off from her courses at UC San Diego to go on a two-week surf safari/photo shoot in Puerto Escondido, Mexico, for Rusty, that same surfwear manufacturer.

Now, five years after she first learned to surf in the predawn darkness--”so none of my friends would see me because I couldn’t stand up to save my life”--Beck, 18, is ranked No. 1 in three amateur divisions of the National Scholastic Surfing Assn. And beginning today, she’ll be competing against some of the best pros in the world at the Body Glove Surfbout XII. The first rounds will be held today in Oceanside with the competition continuing Tuesday through Saturday at Lower Trestles in San Clemente.

Beck’s mother is a dance instructor, so Holly had been wearing tutus since she was 3. When she was 10, she performed in London and Paris on tour with a singing and dancing performance group called the Rising Stars. But her career in a wetsuit didn’t begin until she was a freshman in high school and found her uncle’s old surfboard in her grandparents’ garage.

“I had a hard time convincing my grandparents and parents to let me try it,” Beck said. “My mom is pretty old-fashioned. She thinks girls should be sitting on the beach in bikinis. She told me, ‘You don’t want to compete against boys, they wouldn’t like it.’ I thought it was ridiculous at the time, but it turned out to be pretty true.

“I’d spend the night at my girlfriend’s and her sister worked out before work, so she would drive us to the beach at like 4 a.m. I had watched people surf and seen it in magazines, but we had no idea what we were doing.”

It all clicked during a spring-break family vacation to Hawaii after a couple of hours in the waves at Waikiki.

“I rented one of those huge boats of a board and started catching these tiny ripples and riding them half a mile to the beach,” she said. “It was incredible.”

When she got home to Palos Verdes, Beck used baby-sitting profits to buy a pink and yellow board of her own at a garage sale.

“After that summer, I was all proud of myself because I had a wetsuit tan,” she said. “I was talking to a guy at church and told him I’d been surfing and he made me join the [Peninsula High] team. He and his friends would pick me up and take me to surf team practice and then to school. No matter what the conditions, we surfed every single day. That, and the fact they were so much better than I was, really helped me improve.”

Beck was undefeated in high school competition as a junior and senior and has improved to the point where she’s the top-ranked surfer in the NSSA’s Women’s Division (for students who qualify scholastically), Collegiate Division and Explorer Division (open to any amateur).

But if it weren’t for a stroke of luck, she might still be buying her own boardshorts.

“A couple of girls on my high school team wanted to make a portfolio of us with bios and pictures because they had heard somewhere Rusty was looking for girls to sponsor,” said Beck, who is also sponsored by Body Glove. “At first, I didn’t think it was worth the effort, but it was kind of fun doing it. They called back and said basically, we’re not interested but thanks, and if you come down, you can have some free clothes.

“The other girls were out of town, so I went alone to get the clothes. They gave me a box full and then asked me to try on some stuff. Next thing I know, I’m going to Cabo San Lucas for a photo shoot.”

Beck thought she was going to be surfing, but the people at Rusty who asked her to model surfwear had never seen her homemade portfolio and had no idea she could surf . . . until the first day in Mexico.

“The clothes we were supposed to model hadn’t arrived, so all the guys were going to go surfing,” she said. “I asked if I could tag along.”

Obviously, they were duly impressed.

The next level to conquer, of course, would be the women’s professional tour, but that’s a step Beck has decided to put off until she earns her college degree.

“My dad said if I completed two years of college I could take some time off,” she said, “but I’m afraid it will be too hard to come back. When we left Puerto Escondido, all the girls doing the pro thing were like, ‘Well, we’re off to Australia,’ and I’m like, ‘I’m going back to school.’ ”

The step is more like a leap off the lip into the reef at Pipeline. There’s little question Beck has the talent to compete with the likes of four-time world champion Lisa Andersen, but does she have the intestinal fortitude?

“Holly’s hot, the ability level is very similar,” said Scott Daley, director of promotions and marketing for Body Glove and the No. 1-ranked over-35 amateur surfer in the country. “But there is a huge difference in the mental aspect when you try to go from amateur champion to world champion. There are a lot of different strategies that unfold during pro competitions and one of the biggest is pure nerves.

“Surfing is a lot like golf. That’s why you see so many guys shoot 65s on Thursday and Friday and then start shooting 75 on Saturday and Sunday. There’s only one person who’s going to get you through, and that’s you.

“It’s what’s in your head that really separates the champions from the rest, but Holly’s a great surfer and a great student. She just needs the experience.”

Beck fondly remembers winning her first big amateur event in 1997 at Huntington Beach Pier--”The waves were great, the water was warm, the sun was out and I was so unbelievably stoked”--and her first foray against pros when she advanced two rounds in the same waves at the U.S. Open last summer.

This week at Trestles will be another footprint in the sand on a journey that Beck hopes will one day lead to the victory platform and a paycheck in Australia or Portugal or South Africa or Brazil. For the next three years, though, she’ll have to settle for Southland beaches and amateur trophies.

“I just have to look at every contest as a learning process,” she said, “a chance to learn more strategy and gain confidence and experience in a competitive situation.

“But it’s still surfing. You’ve got to go out and have a great time. You’ve got to have fun.”