BONUS (RANT) EPISODE: Get Out Your Pom Poms! Women Pro Surfers Need Our Cheers, Today!!

One of the joys of women flocking to the water is how we are learning to cheer for one another. (I know, some of us, ahem, are still working on this on particular days and in particular conditions.) This is NOT something we are raised with, cheering for other women, especially successful ones. We come up against our own competitive feelings (no one should be smart, pretty AND talented), as well as the constant messaging that women athletes are "less than" by the misogynist (yes, I said it) sports industry. I got extra fired up about the inequities still in action for pro women surfers while listening to the last two episodes of The Double Up podcast, about the attempt to keep women from winning prize money, the ensuing coup spontaneously launched by pro Lucy Small (yas, girl!) and, then...the fallout. More than anything, I want to inspire us to watch and support women's pro surfing! In this episode, I walk through the whys, and also the HOW'S of watching women in the World Surf League. Let's get our girls!

Show Notes:

Listen to The Double Up Episodes 54 & 55 about the Kirra Longboard Classic

Links to my 7-part series on Why (And How) to Watch Women's Surfing in the Olympics (principles apply to all pro women's surfing)

Watch at worldsurfleague.com website and app, on Facebook, and on YouTube

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Transcript

[00:07] Sheila: Welcome to the Dropping Into Power podcast where we'll be hearing stories about the transformational power of surfing from women surfers of all ages, all levels and all over. We'll hear about courage, commitment, struggles, frustration, epiphany, and of course, life transformations large and small. I'm your host, Sheila Gallion, and I am stoked to share these conversations with these amazing women full of so much passion with all of you. 

Well, aloha everyone, and welcome to the Dropping Into Power podcast. This is just a little bonus episode that is arising out of my enormous passion for professional women surfing and as I was completely fired up by some events that are taking place that the Double Up amazing podcast has been covering. If you're not familiar with the Double Up and if you have any interest in what's going on in women's surfing now, let's clarify what I do in the water room of professional women surfers do in the water. These are different things, but they come from this incredible passion. And my real focus is on cheerleading for these women. And I'm going to get into that. But first and foremost, this episode was inspired by two episodes back to back by the Double Up. The double up is run by Shannon Hughes and Rachel Tilley, both of them high level surfers. Rachel is currently a competitive surfer. Shannon Hughes I first became aware of when she was commentating for the WSL and just was so inspired and amazed by her knowledge and intellect around the sport. So when I discovered they had a podcast, I completely freaked out. And then they followed me. I fan girled out and in fact, I'm going to have them on. They're just all over the world a lot. But they're going to actually come onto the podcast sometime, hopefully at the end of July. So I want to point out episode 54 of the Double Up and episode 55 of the Double Up, because on those episodes they talk about something that took place is taking place in the sign ups for the Kira Longboard Classic, what was supposed to really be apparently like a family style, local style longboard contest in Kira in Australia. But some things took place where basically women were excluded for prize money. I'm actually not going to go way into it. They do such an amazing job talking about it. And on episode 54 they interview Lucy Small who was responsible for a Small coup. And that coup, which actually filled up the open division with all women long story, you got to listen to it, created all kinds of hoopla because, oh my gosh, for the first time, men couldn't win any prize money, but only women could. So there's a lot to that. But really what I was inspired to call out, I first started watching professional women's surf right when women's prize money became equal in 2019. It was a really big deal. That said, there are only half the number of women's surfers on the World Surf Tour. I'm going to get into how you watch professional women's surfing and how you follow it, because it's not completely intuitive, and it takes some dedication to really get invested in what you're watching. So I'm going to talk about that in a minute. But I want to actually just go back to this whole premise of cheerleading for women. Now, I'm of a certain age, as I've talked about many times now, when I was six years old, I was a cheerleader for my big brother. All the girls I knew were cheerleaders for their big brothers. I didn't see any big brothers cheering for girls later in high school, even though I had become a rebellious intellectual, by the time I finally made it on the cheerleading squad, I went for it in my senior year, and I cheered for football. Men's, I feared for baseball. Did we cheer for baseball? No, I cheered for basketball. Now, our favorite ones to cheer for were the water polo players, because they were super grateful, not to mention, hello, very hot. And there is something to that, that we want to cheer for hot men, of course, but that's not why we get invested in sports. It's how we've been indoctrinated. We've also been indoctrinated to believe that women's can't compete with men, that they can't beat men at the same sport. And I was completely guilty of this idea that if a woman couldn't beat a man at a sport, why should I watch women's competitive sports? I just always had my own path. I'm not a super sports fanatic, but now and again, I would get invested in a team basically because of the men I hung out with. I definitely know women who love, love, love sports, but I didn't know any women, maybe just one, who actually was invested in women's sports. And that was all because it's in this paradigm of men versus women. But what I finally started doing, especially with surfing, since this is my passion, once I started watching women surfing, I realized it has nothing to do with that. They're completely different activities. They're really, really different sports, and they look really different. And the same is true in a lot of other sports. Volleyball, for instance. I can't even watch men's volleyball. It moves so fast. There's, like, nothing to watch. Women's volleyball is more interesting. And I'm only know anything about volleyball because my daughter played. But in particular with surfing, the particular way that most men approach the wave is actually different, feels different, looks different to me than women surfing. Women, our bodies are shaped differently. Our center of gravity is different. And rather than comparing who's better, they're actually just genuinely different. I love to see a woman's body fit inside the wave. I just really wanted to point out the things that are keeping us from watching women's sports. And the biggest thing is we don't have the exposure to the story. We don't watch sports, I don't believe, really, just to see win or lose, because what we're really watching is the story. What we really want to be invested in is the story. We also don't watch it for hotness. We need to watch the story of the game. If you just watch football or you just watch basketball or whatever, just looks like a bunch of people running around throwing balls in directions and piling on top of each other, it's not very interesting, except you could sort of watch, oh, wow, look at that spiral throw. Oh, look at how far they threw that basket in. But you still don't understand what's happening. And it's really similar with surfing. Even if you've been surfing quite a while, the chances of you really understanding what's at stake and what is happening in the water on a wave and how it's being scored are pretty slim. I surfed a really long time and had absolutely no idea, hadn't really spent any time understanding how things are scored or what's going on. So this is really just a cheerleading to get more women investing in our sisters, because our sisters are fighting, fighting, fighting for these places. They're fighting for market share. I think we have a ton of women who want to watch professional surfing and root for professional surfing, but they haven't been indoctrinated up to this point or understand how to watch it. And I can tell this because when I'm watching on, say, YouTube, and I'm going to go through exactly how you do this when I'm watching on YouTube or Facebook and oh gosh, you have to listen to the comments. And it's all men and they're just idiots, most of them. Now some of them are starting to be more positive, more amazed, properly amazed by the women. You'll definitely see men coming on these chats going, wow, Tatiana, rips it. And there are some male cheerleaders. But if women come on and post, very often these troll like guys just blow you off and it's just so annoying, or just say stupid shit and then you just shut down the comments. I don't comment because the couple of times I have, people have made stupid comments. So I believe that we have much higher numbers than are showing in these chats. And I want the WSL to know, and all of the layers of professional surfing, that there are a lot of women rooting for women, that we are watching their contests, that we are buying their products. I mean, thank God some of the companies are starting to put women's surfers in their commercials because we've all been so irritated at just the bikini girls. So anyways, that's really what this episode is about, is really understanding how to approach women's professional surfing, and also why it's so important. It's so important that we're rooting for these women. And once you really understand how to watch it, if you've never done it before, you're going to love it. So it's taken me some years to compile how to do this, and I actually leading up to the 2020 Olympics. Right before the 2020 Olympics, I wrote a seven piece article series on how and why to watch women surfing in the Olympics. And that's actually I'll put it in the show notes. It's on my web page under Articles. It's also on Medium and on Substac, but I'll put the links in the show notes and what that walks through. The first one is really more of a primer just for anybody that's completely unfamiliar with surfing. But I do walk through what's at stake, how the judging starts to come into shape, and what is at stake with each individual situation. And I do a whole thing on the wave and how to read the wave and what is happening with the wave. And some of this will be rudimentary to people that already surf, but you're probably going to find some layers. And then I dug into actually how the judges score to the best of my ability, because there's still subtleties I don't understand at all. But you learn a lot from listening to the commentary. And I definitely recommend and I'll go into this more listening to the full heats, if you can, rather than just the condensed heats when you go to do a replay so you can start to understand what's at stake, and then you start to hear the stories of who these people are and what their history is. This is what gives the drama when you're watching pro sports of any kind. You've got the underdog story, you've got where their draft pick was, who they've beaten before. You get all kinds of information you don't even know you've got that gives all of these layers and excitement to these stories and also understanding that these women have all grown up together, they've been competing with each other for years. There's all kinds of history, all kinds of family dramas, illnesses, injuries, so much that goes into what these incredible athletes are accomplishing. So RAL Rosseskumba I want to get into it a little bit on how you actually watch professional women surfing. Now, my personal preference is I like to watch competition. There are all kinds of ways to follow incredible surfers on Instagram, and a lot of people just like to watch the soul surfing. I don't know, there's something in me that likes to watch it when these things are at stake. There is one other thing I wanted to address before I get into it, which is just we have this sort of innate competitive thing that comes out, I think, with women. I think that we are groomed to feel competitive against each other. And you might even feel that if a professional surfer is extra pretty or comes from a really great looking family or has some other benefits in their life, or maybe these are just my insecurities, but I've noticed it to myself. I don't look at a professional male athlete and feel any kind of twang of jealousy, but every now and again I do. That sort of rings up in me. And I do think it keeps us I think I'm completely alone here sometimes from rooting for women. But what I've discovered is as I get deeper into it, I'm so invested in these women. They're my girl crushes, but they're not because they're hot girls, they're because they're amazing. And it's really exciting to have this kind of fandom, which just feels like I just want to lift them when they win at the end of the contest. And there's a tradition that they're not allowed to. Their feet can't touch the stand on the way to the stage. So their friends and family go and chair them and then carry them up the beach and put them on the stand to get their award. And that's what I want to do. That's what I want us to all be doing to these women. And for these women, just because they are doing something so hard and it's so beautiful, they're so powerful, they've gone through so much to get to this level of prowess. And I just want to celebrate them and have them have more opportunities and make lots of money so their careers are safer, so that if they get an injury, they didn't put 22 years into a sport and have nothing left to show for it. I want them to have endorsements even if they're not beauty queen. There are stories of Savannah Lima, who was a champion out of Brazil, who could never get sponsorship because she didn't fit the look. And this is still happening to women. So I don't know how we do this, but somehow I feel like our showing up for them, buying their products or whatever, just talking about them, that there's a way for us to make sure that they're getting their fair share. So I want to talk about how to watch the contest. And one reason for the urgency is that the Corona, J Bay, you have to always say the World Surf League now has this thing they always have a sponsor in front of their contest, but of course they need money and it's very difficult to figure out how to make professional surfing a spectator sport. So the Corona open J Bay at Jefferies Bay Eastern Cape, South Africa starts actually in 6 hours from now, the waiting period starts and oh my God, this is one of the best waves in the world that most of us will never ever get to serve. And that is another really exciting thing about watching, in particular the CT, the World Championship Tour, because they go to the best waves in the world, they don't always cooperate. But what we're hoping for is that you could see the best surfers or the best competitive surfers in the world on the best waves in the world, and it is spectacular to watch. So this is just a primer on how the championship tour works. There are ten events throughout the year and then there is a final at Trestles. This is very controversial. It was just changed. There are structures I'm not going to get super into right in the front of this, but that is how the race goes throughout the year. And it comes down to the final five. And then they have a surf off at the end of the year. So we are going into stop number nine, which is at J Bay. The next one is going to be at Tejo Poto, which people have generally been calling Chopo for a lot of years. They're trying to kind of get that pronunciation right. I'm doing my best and that isn't tahiti. And it is the gigantic, terrifying barrel that you see, the gigantic thick throwing lip, the left. This year there's a men's event and a women's event, and that is the last stop on the championship tour before the surf off. So we're going into these last two rounds the way that you can watch the professional, the WCT, there are three different ways you can watch it. Actually, there's a surf channel, too, but I only know how to do it streaming. So, number one, you go to the Wslworldsurfleague.com, they have an app and they'll advertise when it's starting. If you sign up on it, then you get notified for the event windows, which I'll talk about in a minute, and also when it goes live and who's surfing. Only problem is, a lot of times that app doesn't work or it doesn't work live. It works for replays. So you can also go online on your computer and try that. Sometimes that doesn't work. So the next step is for those who have Facebook. You can watch it on Facebook, go to the World Surf League, and then you're going to see those live feeds on their Facebook page. One will be in Portuguese and one will be in English. So if you click on one and they're speaking Portuguese, keep scrolling down until you find the English one. That being because there's such an enormous force, the Brazilian surfers are such an enormous force in world surfing. And the next way is to watch on YouTube. YouTube is actually my favorite way to watch it. I find that the people that are commenting are a little bit less annoying. It's also easier to just close that link and you can full screen it and watch it on there. If you can't watch it live, which you almost never will be able to, because the problem with surf contests are that they only happen during a certain window of time. And I'll back up and talk about that. So every contest will have a window. I'm not sure the exact number. I think it's about ten days. So the whole contest has to take place within that surf window. And in that surf window, they have to get through all the men and all the women. So you'll see all kinds of people complaining, these waves are so bad, why are they surfing this day? Well, that's because they have to do their best to try to fit all of the heats and all of the days. They've got rounds to go through and quarter finals and semifinals and finals. And so they're trying their best, really, for the last events, the finals to be the most exciting. But there's going to be a window, and sometimes maybe it's like a 16 day window. So you'll see the notification. It's off for today, it's on for today, it's off for today, it's on for today, it's off for the day. And so to try and coordinate one's work schedule and life schedule, not to mention the time zone problems, it's difficult to coordinate that and see it live. Also, totally honest, when you're watching professional surfing, a lot of times it's kind of boring. There's a lot of downtime, so in between them catching waves, because sometimes the ocean goes flat, it's the commentators talking very different opinions on the commentators and what people like. They change out the commentators through every heat, and there's all kinds of complaints about the commentators. No matter what, I like all the commentators. I just like being in the soup. I like listening to it all, soaking it in, hearing what they have to say. This is where you get the history, where they pull out the stats. Yeah, sometimes it's a little blathering, but I still really enjoy it. And that's how I've gotten to be so much more educated about what's going on in surfing and what I'm watching. Both maneuver wise, they're all experts in the booth, and then they'll have other experts, they'll have people show up and talk during the heat. Sometimes it's really annoying. They've got an interview going on and in the back, somebody is surfing the wave of their life, but then they do replays, and then they break down the replays, and then they talk about the replays. And so you get to just really learn a lot about it. So if you're not able to watch it live sometimes if I'm able to watch it live, I'll just have it, like in the background while I'm working, and then when something happens, I go back to it and watch. Then if you're not able to watch it live, they have replays, and you have two different choices of replays. You can replay the full heat, or you can replay a condensed version of the heat. So the full heat. This is going to be a long process. You're going to watch 35 minutes, depending on where you are in the rounds. I think it's think they start at 30 and go to 35 or 40. So much to learn. So that might be a long time for you to be sitting in the background. I like to put on the heats when late at night, and I might sort of be checking email, but I just like to hear the sound of the voice in the ocean. And then when everybody gets excited, I watch what's happening. Or if you just want to know what happened, you can watch the condensed version, and that will just show you all the waves that everybody has surfed. If you get nervous like me, and you need to know who won ahead of time, you can look at the details and it'll show you the results. That's just me. Sometimes I don't like suspense at all. I like to know and then if I know that my favorites have won, then I'll go back and look at the replays. So these are just ways to get educated in who the surfers are and understanding what you're watching. And the commentators are really good, especially if you're not somebody that's watched surfing forever and ever. Like, some of the trolls will be complaining that they're getting too much information. But it's a really great way to learn, not just about pro surfing, but about surfing, but about what maneuvers are possible, about who has been doing them and how these things develop. So it's really, I think, fascinating. A couple more things to break down in all of this. So the World Championship tour. The WCT is the elite. Elite. Elite tour. They created something this last year, maybe two years ago, called the Challenger Series. Before that, as I understood it, I understand everything better now than I did a few years ago. And there is still something called the QS. The World Qualifying Series. And these are regional series where people compete trying to accumulate points. And that was traditionally the path onto the WCT. It's my understanding somebody might correct me on this, that when the Challenger Series was created, they actually made it sort of a middle ground. So now the top QS performers from each region enter into the Challenger Series, and then halfway through the WCT and this is so controversial and I hate it, I hope that they stop this. Halfway through the WCT, all of these people, 34 men and 17 women that are competing on the Championship Tour, they cut half of them. Half of them drop down into the Challenger Series. After five events, if you can imagine finally making it onto a championship team in whatever your sport may be, and then halfway through, you get cut and sent back to the farm leagues, that's what they've done. This latest Wcell CEO just either quit or was fired. It's very hush hush. This is the person who instigated these changes, and I understand why they did it, that the idea was to create more drama so that they can try and draw more spectators to the sport. But the problem is it's alienated a lot of the surfers and also just breaks your heart for the surfers like to think of what it takes to ever get on. They call it the Dream Tour, the Championship Tour, and then be cut from it halfway through and then have to go back to fight for your spot. So then what happens is you've got half of the CT surfers drop down to the Challenger Series, and then you've got the top QS, the up and comers who are fighting for bots back onto the CT the following year. Now, the Challenger Series is actually really fun. The Challenger Series, even though I don't like that it exists because of what it's meant for cutting the Championship Tour surfers. But the surfing is incredible. And so you've got the young, progressive up and comers or people who have just barely missed the chance to be on the tour. It's so hard to get up there. These surfers are so incredible. And so sometimes one of those people just sets fire and surfs the heat to their lives and wins a contest. And either they're new and young and just employed something progressive, or they've been trying to make it and they finally get their dream spot. It's exciting. The surfing is great. The tour stops are still really good on the Challenger Series. They have more surfers on the Challenger Series, so they have to stretch that out longer. They have a bigger opening round and then it gets windowed down. So that's a pretty long window on those. And then the final way to watch surfing is the WQS, the Regional Series. And I don't think those are always posted as replays, so you can definitely get the replays of the and this is I'm talking about shortboarding. Longboarding is a whole other thing. And I'm going to need Rachel Tilly to educate me on that when she comes on the show. But I know the key events do have replays that can be watched and are also broadcast live. So as I learn more about the longboard tours and maybe Rachel, when she's on, she can tell us more about that. Rachel and Shannon, who are both beautiful, longboarders. It's been a little bit of a blind spot for me because I've just slowly focused on the shortboarding competitions. So there are ways to watch some of the QS, but mostly you can watch the events in the Challenger Series and you can watch the WSL events. So the last thing I want to talk about is the Olympics, that we're going into the qualifying for the Olympics, and I'm actually going to revise the series of articles that I wrote and write them again. So dealing with who is contending for the Olympics in 2024, which are going to be taking place in Tahiti. So they're going to be amazing waves, and this next group is going to be incredible. So Carissa Moore was the gold medalist last year for the United States. Well, one thing that's interesting is when you watch it you'll see the Hawaiian surfers surf for Hawai. They don't surf for the US. So that's a whole complicated and deep cultural and important thing for Hawaiians that they identify as Hawaiian surfers but in the Olympics, they are part of the United States. And so last year, Carissa Moore was the gold medalist. It was super exciting. They weren't the best waves in the world or not last year, but last Olympics. And so this season, there's different ways that they're qualifying so that some of the CT surfers qualify. There's also other games, international games that people qualify for and I'll get into that at another time. But let this just be a call to cheerlead for our women's surfers and I want to give a list of who is competing tomorrow at the oh, my gosh. These girls are just amazing. And then there's also two wild cards. So they always have wild cards that each event is given a wild card. It might be a local favorite or it might be somebody that's just earned their way. There's injury wild cards and then there's also event wild cards. So at this event, we have Molly Picklum versus Caitlin Simmers and Gabriela Bryant. That'll be a great heat. That's heat number one. Heat number two is Carissa Moore, Lakey Peterson, and Sarah Baum who is a South African surfer believe she's the wild card in this event. And then heat three. We've got tyler wright, Tatiana weston webb and Joanne Defay. And finally, heat four. Caroline Marks, Stephanie Gilmore, and Betty Lu Sakura Johnson. All of these women. It's just ridiculous that there's only twelve women surfing at this level now ten who are actually on the tour. The number of women that are just ripping. This is another reason, guys. We need to double the women's number so if we start showing up in droves we can get 17 more women on the tour to match those 34 men because 17 women is not enough. And individually, I mean, any one of these surfers Caity Simmers, who's only 17 and just has won two different two out of the recent WCT contest and she's just a little prodigy and has speed and progression. Tyler Wright. That's my girl. She's come back from a hideous illness that really almost killed her and it took her years to survive and come back. She comes from a surfing family and, in fact, her brothers, who were both pro surfers were always chasing Tyler and it's great to watch their stories. There's a really cool series called make or Break if you haven't seen that part of again, what the recent WSL CEO did was trying to popularize surf to non surfers. But where I think they're kind of missing their mark again is they need to market to those of us who are actually surfing and talk to us like surfers even if we're. Beginner surfers. We're surfers. We want to be engaged as surfers and really learn and grow and understand the sport. So I could say amazing things about any of these women. Carissa Moore, oh my gosh, I mean, Carissa Moore can win any heat. And the power that she has along with her just beautiful, unique style is incredible. Stephanie Gilmore, just the most elegant, beautiful surfer. They're all Tatiana, west and Webb. Just completely fearless. All of these girls, incredible. You'd just be blown away watching them if you've never watched them before. So that's all I had to say. Let's cheer for the women. And if you can't watch it live, click on, watch the replay, listen to the Double Up and learn why this is so important. And I'm not sure who is going to be next on the guests. I have a couple of amazing guests lined up. I have the ladies from the Double Up and I also have a marine biologist from Mexico, have an author of an incredible book here in Oahu that was all about surfing, the surfing sisterhood. So we're not sure what order they're going to arrive in. That's who's on the agenda. And thank you so much for I can't believe I've never said this before, for dropping in.