Andersen a Runaway Success on the Waves, and in Her Life

The first time Lisa Andersen surfed in a contest in Huntington Beach, event promoter Ian Cairns noticed her mother’s signature bore a striking resemblance to her own on her entry form.

He didn’t press the point and Andersen--who had run away from home in Florida and come to Surf City to “become a world champion,” according to the note she left her parents--ended up winning her first contest, a National Scholastic Surfing Assn. event.

She was 16 and says she didn’t really know if there even was a women’s world champion of surfing, but she had “big plans.”

A pipe dream? It certainly seemed that way, but somehow she managed to turn it into a Pipeline dream that included victories at that surfing Mecca on Oahu’s North Shore and other exotic locales around the globe en route to four world championships.

Wednesday, Andersen returned to the waves of Huntington Beach, 14 years older and worlds removed from the scared little girl Cairns found curled up under a bench on the beach that morning.

She is the mother of a 7-year-old daughter, Erica, and again a force on the World Championship Tour, currently ranked No. 3 after a self-imposed one-year hiatus during which she discovered what it was like to live a “normal” life.

“I drove Erica to school and cooked dinner,” she said. “I had a normal relationship with a guy. It was something I really needed at that point. I just needed a break.

“But I never said I was going to retire and never had any intention of retiring. When I came here last year as a spectator, even though the waves weren’t very good, I knew I had to come back. I wanted to be out there so bad.”

So Andersen accepted a wild card into every event on the World Championship Tour this year and returned with a vengeance, making it to the finals of her first event, the Billabong Pro on Australia’s Gold Coast in March.

“I hadn’t seen any of the girls surf in a while and I had this feeling that everyone would be surfing at this super-high level,” she said. “But I wasn’t too nervous because there wasn’t really that much pressure on me.

“I found out I was behind in terms of mental preparation, but I was really happy with the way I surfed and I still feel like I’m surfing well.”

Andersen finished second by .65 points to Australia’s Kate Skarratt Wednesday and will meet Australia’s Neridah Falconer today in the second round of the elleven Pro women’s event.

A WORKING MOTHER

Erica is home in Florida this week, but she traveled with mom to Australia and Tahiti earlier this year. Andersen was concerned that her daughter might fall behind during a crucial period when her classmates were learning to read.

“I’m so proud of her,” Andersen said, smiling. “She wants to be able to travel with me so she works hard to catch up when we get home. And now she wants to move to Tahiti.”

Andersen--separated from Erica’s father, Renato Hickel, former Assn. of Surfing Professionals head judge--has been on her own a long time. She’s used to feeling as though she lives in another world from most of her peers on the tour.

“It’s a balancing act that never stops, trying to stay focused on surfing while still making sure that Erica is my No. 1 priority,” she said. “You get pulled in a lot of directions and your emotions go back and forth.”

There’s little to fear on a two-foot day at Huntington Beach, but when you’re racing the collapsing section of a 10-foot wave breaking over a barely submerged coral reef with your daughter watching, a lot of things spin through your head that have nothing to do with a surf contest.

“When you’re young and on your own, the fear factor is almost nonexistent,” she said. “But sometimes I feel like I have to pull back from the edge and make sure I don’t get hurt. The other girls don’t have the same responsibilities, but someday they’ll understand.”

Still, Andersen says she’s committed to going “100%” after a fifth world title and being a world-class mother at the same time, a balancing act she believes she can master. And if you’ve ever seen her blast off the lip and make a gravity-defying re-entry, you’d never doubt her ability to rocket to another world title . . . even with a child on board.

THE RED MENACE

A red tide that spreads all the way up to Santa Barbara descended on Huntington Beach early Wednesday morning, making the small and inconsistent swell look like a churning mud bath.

A red tide is not a tide at all, of course, merely a condition when blooming algae releases a reddish pigment. And the algal bloom of phytoplankton has nothing to do with recent beach closures caused by increased bacteria levels from runoff into the ocean.

“The red tide sometimes has a toxic effect that has been related to the death of sea lions,” said Matt Hagemann, a former Environmental Protection Agency water-quality researcher who is serving as the Bluetorch Pro’s environmental coordinator. “And eating shellfish caught during a red tide can be fatal to humans. But the surfers have no need to be concerned. It takes a very concentrated source.”

Laguna Beach’s Pat O’Connell was more worried about staying on his board than getting sick.

“It smells like a river instead of the ocean, but the main problem is that it’s slippery,” he said. “I just used more wax and made sure it was extra grippy.”

The high tide and inconsistent swell were more of a problem for O’Connell. The waves disappeared for most of O’Connell’s heat and he finished third behind South Africa’s Greg Emslie and Brazil’s Rosa Peterson. O’Connell will meet Peterson again today in the second round.