Flexing Her Curl Power

Even nice little girls get frustrated, and Courtney Conlogue is clearly on edge when she drops into a large green wave and, once again, is cut off by a man who left his manners on the beach.

“Hey, my wave!” she yells, to no avail. “My wave!” she shouts again, carving menacing turns behind and alongside him.

Finally, the man kicks out and looks over his shoulder in awe.

The girl has basically surfed circles around him, having literally spun a great big one as she approached the beach: a power 360 as her wave was closing out.

It’s the nicest move anyone on either side of Huntington Beach Pier has pulled off all afternoon.

A Budding Superstar

Surfing’s brightest young star has sun-bleached hair, a sprinkling of freckles on her cheeks and nose and a smile as bright as the moon.

It’s the look that landed Conlogue her first sponsorship deal, two years ago during a model search with surfwear giant Roxy.

But what Roxy didn’t know was that it had stumbled upon a model who could actually rip, the type of compliment generally reserved for much older boys or only the upper echelon of female surfers.

Though just a wisp of a child, light enough to be swept away by even the mildest currents, she was in total control on the waves. Her speed, her sharp turns and her fluid style set her apart from others of both her age and gender.

She’s 12 now, still a wisp but filling out, experienced beyond her years, her future as bright as her smile.

The seventh-grader from Santa Ana -- a regular at the pier and other local breaks -- is undefeated and ranked first in the Southwest Conference open women’s division of the National Scholastic Surfing Assn., where she competes against much older rivals.

She’s being hailed as Southern California’s most promising female pro prospect since Lisa Andersen moved here from Florida in the late 1980s and won four consecutive world championships during the mid-90s.

And Conlogue is among perhaps a dozen young girls worldwide who are regarded as next-generation surfers, potential world champions whose talent will soon exceed that currently on display.

“They make us nervous already,” confesses Sofia Mulanovich, 21, the reigning world champion and Roxy team rider from Lima, Peru. “They’re surfing really well and they really want it. I’m, like, ‘Wow!’ because of how old they are. Courtney is doing things that I couldn’t do at her age.”

Still Just a Kid

As Mulanovich and other pros learned, and as Conlogue is learning, being a standout surfer at so young an age can be wearisome.

Conlogue, who stands 5 feet and weighs just under 100 pounds, is trying to balance life as an everyday kid versus that of a prodigy increasingly surrounded by much older people. After-school playtime with classmates doesn’t exist. Her world revolves almost solely around the ocean and the surfer-girl lifestyle.

All of the big surfing-related companies want her as their sponsored rider. Earlier this month, she dropped Roxy in favor of rival Billabong, her parents saying Billabong has offered to oversee her development more closely.

Richard and Tracey Conlogue have tried to shield their daughter from the business end of things, saying that she is still a kid and shouldn’t be made to feel like a pawn.

In the last month, though, Courtney has traveled to Tahiti, as an alternate on the U.S. surfing team, and to the tropical paradise called Tavarua, on a junket for another of her sponsors.

Just last week, she spent all day surfing before cameras for a fast-food commercial. Before that, her mother had to rush her to a Hollywood salon to get hair extensions, because the director wanted a girl with longer blond hair.

Tracey says her daughter asked her at one point during the process, “Mom, what are you doing to me?”

But Courtney says she really doesn’t mind all the attention. And Maria Colmenares, her counselor at Villa Fundamental School, says that it has not affected her schoolwork. She’s earning mostly A’s and plays the clarinet in an advanced music class.

“She’s very well respected here and we’re all proud of her,” the counselor says.

Her parents, meanwhile, are finding the logistics involved with her budding career increasingly overwhelming. Courtney is expected to qualify for a scholarship to a private boarding school on the East Coast, as her older sister Charleen did. But to keep her surfing career alive, she’ll need to stay local and will probably end up at Huntington Beach High, which has a surf team.

At some point, she’ll need to commit to the Assn. of Surfing Professionals’ World Qualifying Series tour, which is the steppingstone to the elite World Championship Tour. Meanwhile, she has commitments for photo sessions and modeling assignments.

“As her parent I’m always talking to her about these dreams and goals of hers, telling her it takes focus and drive,” Tracey says. “I keep telling her, ‘You’re going to have to get into that and are you prepared for it?’ ”

So far the answer is a resounding yes. Courtney maintains that her dream is to be world champion and it has been “since I was a little kid.”

‘Driven’ to Succeed

Richard Conlogue started Courtney on a bodyboard when she was 4, and when she started standing on it, he quickly realized she had extraordinary talent.

She received her first surfboard when she was 6 and her initiation on a big day at Lower Trestles near San Clemente.

“It just freaked me out,” she says of her first real ride. “I was just this little spot on this great big wave.”

It was exhilarating, though, and from then on, surfing occupied her spare time. She studied videos of the world’s best and now confesses that although she looks up to the top women, who treat her like a little sister, it’s the men she tries to emulate.

She is routinely beating 16- and 17-year-old amateurs, and she has already jousted with pros. In two local WQS events last season, she advanced to the semifinals.

“She is one of the most driven people I’ve ever met,” says Megan Brainard, the girls’ team manager for Billabong. “When you ask her what her goals are, she’s like, ‘I want to win the NSSA, then I want to be a world champion. Then I want to become an engineer or a biochemist.’

“She knows what she wants and she knows what she needs to do to get there.”

Standing in her way, however, may be someone much like her. Hawaii’s Carissa Moore is making a similar splash on the amateur scene and the two, separated in age by only two days, seem headed for a clash of junior titans in the NSSA Nationals this summer at Lower Trestles.

Conlogue won’t be surfing circles around Moore, but as she is well aware, having a 360 in her arsenal certainly won’t hurt.