Breaking Down Barriers

Rochelle Ballard once opened a semifinal heat at Burleigh Heads in Queensland, Australia, with a tube ride that left her covered for an astonishing 50 yards. The judges rewarded her with only the second perfect 10 given in women’s pro surfing competition.

She then took off on another large wave, which quickly grew steeper and pitched. She air-dropped briefly, then regained her balance and tucked even deeper into another grinding tube, from which she emerged in a spray of mist.

Ballard had made surfing history by becoming the only woman to have registered consecutive perfect 10s.

That was six years ago, but it’s worth revisiting because on that sunny day Down Under, when she advanced to the final and beat superstar Lisa Andersen, the petite blond surfer who was born in Montebello but grew up on the turbulent shores of Kauai had emphatically proved what her peers already had begun to realize.

There was no better barrel rider in a bikini.

Ballard, who stands a mere 5 feet 1 and weighs only 105 pounds, had ventured into what had long been a man’s realm and shot out with her arms raised high, as if to show that a little courage and determination, along with considerable talent, can accomplish great things.

“I would always dream of just getting the best barrels possible and seeing myself there and wanting it so bad,” Ballard says. “It was what drove me because I just love barrels so much. It’s an amazing feeling and it’s the most challenging thing in surfing.”

Today, at 32, Ballard is much more than simply the premier tube-rider in women’s surfing. She’s setting an example for future generations, inspiring others wanting to shake long-held stereotypes; she’s proof that women can do the same things men can do -- “in a feminine way,” she says -- if they put their hearts and minds to it.

“I’ve watched her progress from an amateur to a pro and she has the total deal,” says Brian Keaulana, a resident of nearby Makaha and a legendary figure in surfing circles for his exploits as a lifeguard and big-wave surfer. “I see some girls and they have this feminine side when it comes to danger, and they’re all, ‘Eek, eek!’ ” He laughs.

“But with her,” he says, “and I don’t mean this in a bad way, because she’s all woman and all girl, I see a lot more confidence and skill. She can ride barrels and put guys to shame.”

Keaulana, 42, helped prepare Ballard, Keala Kennelly, Megan Abubo and Kate Skarratt for their various roles -- as stand-ins, stunt doubles or as themselves -- in the 2002 movie “Blue Crush,” in which the star and her friends tackle the wickedly hollow waves at the Banzai Pipeline.

In reality, it should be pointed out, Pipeline remains very much a man’s world, a fiercely competitive arena in which a powerful hierarchy exists.

Even the more accomplished male surfers have to prove themselves before they’re allowed passage to the sweet spots of the lineup. Nobody, when the waves are at their biggest and best, simply paddles out and starts taking the best waves.

The waves also do a good job of weeding out those who don’t belong.

However, Ballard points out, more women are being seen on the fringes of those sweet spots, which means they have taken the first step. And she envisions a time when a women’s contest is held at Pipeline -- thus removing the male element and opening the door wider.

“Pipeline is still a place where very few women will take that challenge up and overcome that challenge and have it become a regular place where they’ll surf at,” she acknowledges. “But I definitely think there will be more.”

Men may scoff at such a statement. But given the tremendous strides women already have made, thanks to examples set by people such as Ballard, she’s probably right.

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These are the lazy days of summer on Oahu’s North Shore. There are no big swells rolling in as they do during the winter. Sunset Beach, Pipeline and Waimea Bay are as flat as lakes. There are no hordes of surfers scrambling around town. It’s a peaceful time in a setting best described as idyllic.

Ballard, an O’Neill Clothing-sponsored pro and one of the featured surfers in the Honda Element U.S. Open of Surfing, scheduled for Monday through Aug. 3 at Huntington Beach Pier, is relaxing at home before her trip to California.

Her husband, surf video producer Bill Ballard, is away. But her dogs, a golden retriever named Kuma and a black Lab named Coal, are keeping her company, demanding her attention.

That Ballard can own such a place, a large, two-story home with a big yard surrounded by dense tropical jungle, is testament to how far she and her sport have come.

Sitting on the outside deck of the upper floor, she recalls a time in the late 1980s, when she was competing as an amateur and conducting her first interview with a newspaper reporter, who asked what her goals were.

One, she responded, was to someday win a world title. It was an admirable goal, realistic enough.

The other was to realize a dream of seeing the sport ascend to a respectable new level -- one in which women would be looked up to as legitimate athletes in a sport so long dominated by men; one in which women, likewise, could make a career for themselves as athletes and role models.

This, too, was an admirable ambition, at a time when Andersen, with her dominating, stylish manner and appearance, was just beginning to make people take notice -- and soon to make a titanic splash that would set women’s surfing on the course it remains on today.

It was hardly realistic at the time, though. In fact, it was almost laughable -- or so many believed. Women’s surfing would never attain so lofty a plateau.

“I look back and I’m like, ‘Wow!’ ” Ballard recalls with a smile. “I didn’t know that that’s where my train of thought was way back then.”

Sixteen years later, Ballard, while she has yet to win a world championship -- she finished fourth twice and is a perpetual top-10 performer on the Assn. of Surfing Professionals’ elite World Championship Tour -- earns a six-figure income, travels the world and lives across the street from one of her favorite surf breaks, just up the road from Pipeline.

“Rochelle Ballard is a great surfer and a true charger in the world of girls’ surfing -- charging meaning riding big waves,” says Kelly Gibson, president of O’Neill Clothing in Irvine. “She is a major part of the new guard as far as busting down the door and bringing more credibility to the sport. We’re ecstatic with what she has done with surfing, and with women’s surfing in particular in the last five years.”

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Ballard may be all of that. Undoubtedly, she is among the sport’s humblest stars, a personable, articulate surfer well-liked on tour and by the surfing public -- as her victory in the 2002 Surfer Poll Awards attests.

Abubo, 25, is one of Ballard’s neighbors and closest friends. She remembers meeting Ballard for the first time in 1994 during a contest in Huntington Beach and was surprised at how friendly the veteran was to the 10th-grader competing in her first pro contest.

Ballard wasn’t all that friendly. She dispatched her opponent and went on to win the event.

Two years later, Abubo and one of her friends were having trouble finding accommodations for a contest in France. Ballard took them both in, and that is where their relationship began.

“Rochelle is not just a barrel specialist,” Abubo says. “She’s a well-rounded surfer.... But more than that, she has definitely stepped into this whole role-model deal. People really look up to her.”

Ballard credits her Kauai upbringing, more than anything else, for her success. Her family moved there when she was 6 months old, and relatives still own a restaurant there.

She started surfing at 10, and as a teenager was coached by Margo Oberg, a prominent figure in women’s surfing at the time.

“Many of my role models were Kauai people,” Ballard says. “Kauai is just one of those places where there are just so many talented surfers. The list can go on and on of guys you’ve never heard of that are amazing surfers -- and they were my inspiration.”

She remembers watching Andy and Bruce Irons tear through waves when they were just kids. Today, Andy Irons, who lives in Princeville, Hawaii, is the men’s world champion and threatening to run away with a second title.

His brother, Bruce, although not quite as fluid or consistent, is an exciting surfer, regarded as one of the world’s top barrel riders.

“It’s one of those things where you grow up being raised around guy surfers and especially the ones from Kauai because they’re actually the ones pushing men’s surfing today,” Ballard says. “And these are the guys that I grew up around ....

“It was the ‘You can’t do it because you’re a girl’ thing, but then at the same time they’d push me and tell me how to do it and help me out. And then when I did do it, they’d go, ‘Wow!’ ”

Today, Ballard is in the late stages of her career as a competitive surfer -- she says she’ll be back on tour next year but wouldn’t venture a guess after that, other than to say she’ll still be involved with O’Neill, doing photo shoots and helping to produce new lines of surf apparel.

Additionally, she’ll still be running her popular “Surf Camps for Chicks Who Rip,” one of which will be held Monday in conjunction with the U.S. Open

(details: www.sgmag.com).

The camps, which benefit the charity Boarding 4 Breast Cancer, are in their third year and intended to help intermediate-to-advanced surfers develop competitive skills.

With or without the camps, Ballard says, those women seem to be everywhere.

Australia’s Chelsea Georgeson, 19, is already a star on the WCT, doing amazing things. Peru’s Sofia Mulanovich, 20, is carving 360-degree turns. Kennelly, 25, another Kauai product, is atop the WCT standings and, like Ballard, has also become known as a tube-riding specialist -- she lists Pipeline and equally notorious Teahupoo in Tahiti as her favorite breaks.

“Plus, some of the younger kids right now, 10 to 11 years old, are already doing stuff the experienced girls are doing,” Ballard says. “They’re already getting barreled and they’re already doing roundhouse cutbacks and floaters. They draw good lines and have good style.

“It’s like anything in this world -- in this day and age people are doing things that we always thought were impossible. People say it is possible because they can see it in their mind. That’s where dreams are made and minds are blown.

“And once a mind is blown and the impossible is no longer unknown, it paves the way for somebody else to step into that and do it, and before you know it everybody’s doing it.”

Not everybody, but you get her drift.