Joe Surf: O.C.’s Conlogue waits out delays in her world title quest

Think the surf has been small in Huntington Beach and around Orange County lately?

The same can be said of Honolua Bay in Maui, where the World Surf League is trying to put on a contest to determine the women’s world champion. As of Tuesday, a lay day has been called each day since Saturday because it’s been flat, but forecasters are expecting a swell later this week.

In the meantime, Santa Ana’s Courtney Conlogue is passing the time doing what anybody does when visiting Hawaii. She took a hike and visited a lavender garden and is eating plenty of papaya, mango and pineapple.

She seems quite capable of enjoying the moment and not getting too anxious about surfing in the biggest contest of her life. The Target Maui Pro is the 10th and final contest of the WSL’s World Championship Tour and will determine the 2015 world champion.

Conlogue is ranked No. 2 behind Hawaii’s Carissa Moore, a two-time world champion and the winner of this contest last year. While Moore will have a home-break advantage, Conlogue will have support from across the Pacific in Orange County and the rest of California.

Trying to become the first Orange County surfer to win a women’s world title since Joyce Hoffman in 1966, Conlogue continues to be good at a “one wave at a time” approach and not allowing the weight of the moment to pull her down.

“To be at the top, you have to be able to adapt to anything that’s thrown your way,” Conlogue said in an interview posted on worldsurfleague.com. “That’s what makes a champion at the end of the season. You have all these different conditions, variables – boards don’t come, boards break, you get hurt … it’s who the best athlete was for that season, who was able to adapt to whatever was thrown their way.”

Though she’s just 23, Conlogue sounds like a wily veteran. And she is. She had a perfect score at Honolua Bay when she entered the contest as a wild card in 2006 when she was 14.

She won the U.S. Open of Surfing when she was just 16.

Her experience in and out of the water helped her when she had to deal with the biggest challenge of her career last year.

Conlogue was free surfing on a lay day during the Rip Curl Women’s Pro Bells Beach in Australia in late April, getting ready for Round 4 of the event, when everything turned upside down.

“I was getting some of the best barrels of my life,” Conlogue said the day after severely spraining her right ankle. “All of a sudden I was in the barrel and the foam ball just smashed the tail of my board. My toe and my ankle just cranked and I came up with this tingling pain.”

Despite her best efforts to overcome the pain, Conlogue had to withdraw from the contest at Bells Beach and wound up missing the next three events, including the U.S. Open, spoiling any chance of winning a world title. She finished the season ranked No. 9.

This season she has won three of the nine contests and has been at or near the top of the leaderboard all season. She had the No. 1 spot after a third-place finish at the U.S. Open in Huntington Beach. Since then, Conlogue and Moore have alternated holding the top spot.

“I was so happy when I got that yellow [leader’s] jersey,” Conlogue said. “It was my first time ever getting to that No. 1 rating and what it felt like to be on top. That was a really cool moment in my season.

“It was an evolution. I went from starting with my low rating at the start of the season to getting on top. And it’s been a seesaw battle from there. The last event is your last shot. I think everything I’ve done in this process has allowed me to be in this race the whole time. It’s an exciting journey. I’ve been training my whole life to be where I am right now.”

JOE HAAKENSON is a Huntington Beach-based sports writer and editor. He may be reached at joe@juvecreative.com.