Carissa Moore's Greatness Started With A Perfect 10 In A Men's Contest In Mexico
With the announcement that five-time world champion and Olympic gold medalist Carissa Moore will be stepping away from competition, it’s worth looking back on how we got here. By the time she was 13 she was already a bonafide surf star. And before she could even drive she was posting 10-point scores in men’s contests.
In 2016, I had the opportunity to team up with Carissa’s father, Chris, to write a book about his experiences raising a child surf protege. There’s certainly now handbook on how to shatter longstanding gender barriers in surfing, so through a lot of hard work and trial and error, Chris and Carissa persevered. Carissa would win her first world title when she was only 18 years old. And now, as she moves on to the next chapter of her life, a quick look back at a contest in Baja Mexico when it became crystal clear to the world just what kind of trajectory Carissa was on. Here’s an excerpt from First Priority: A Father's Journey Raising World Champion Carissa Moore:
We had traveled to San Miguel, Mexico for The Sweet 16, a specialty event that the National Scholastic Surfing Association sponsored. At just 15, she was the only female surfer—a young girl, at that—in a field of hungry, elite amateur males. San Miguel boasted a right hand, cobblestone point break, the type of break I knew she could do something with if given a proper chance. She had just secured two more national titles to raise her NSSA record to eleven. Upon hearing that the NSSA was sponsoring a specialty event in conjunction with a men’s professional contest, I inquired to Janice Aragon, the Head of the NSSA, about Carissa being a part of the event; in which Janice readily obliged. Soon after I was busy making preparations to get us to San Miguel, about a hundred miles into Baja Mexico.
We purposely arrived a few days early. I had a fledgling idea to try and get her a spot in the men’s main event. By this time in her career, I had working knowledge on how contests worked. The main event in Mexico was a low-rated Men’s World Qualifying Series event. I figured there was a good shot that some of the male alternates wouldn't be waiting around and there might be be some open slots in the first round heats. I checked in with the event director to see if she could be allowed onto the alternate list. The gamble paid off. Later that day she were called into a heat.
She was young. She trusted me. She didn’t overthink it.
“Why not?” I said.
“Why not!” she replied, and went off to pick up her competition jersey.
While she suited up, I did my customary check of her equipment and discovered something awful—a fin box was cracked—a loose fin could pop out at any moment. We didn’t even have a back-up board and her heat was about to start. I opted not to tell her. What good would that have done?
In the lineup, she met conditions that were onshore, imperfect and chopped up by the wind. In the previous heats most competitors had managed a turn or two with no real waves being on offer. We had discussed a strategy: push your turns, surf in the moment, and have fun. I convinced her that she had nothing to lose and she paddled out confident and care-free.
By a twist of fate she had Albee Layer in her heat, a kid she’d grown up surfing against in Hawaii. Whenever she had a heat with Albee back home in those NSSA grom days she always came out on top. Albee was her good luck charm in that way.
Albee started off the heat with an average wave. The other two competitors caught waves shortly thereafter, leaving her out the back all alone. Her first wave was a quick in-and-out, which still gave her time to sit out the back and chose a wave before her competitors got back out and inevitably would start paddling around her to establish priority.
She paddled into a nice forming right. Taking off, she seamlessly lined up the wave, channeling grace and style into each bottom turn and critical move, a flawless transition through maneuver after maneuver. It almost seemed like a dream sequence. She ended the sweetly mesmerizing performance with a forehand reverse. I had forgotten all about the fin. It was the best wave of the day. The judges scored her a perfect ten.
I remember watching her paddle back out and seeing a small contingent of Hawaiian surfers sitting on the shoreline cheering for her. It was almost unbelievable. A perfect ten! In her first professional men’s surfing event, on almost her very first wave. Despite Carissa being a late entry, despite her being the lone female, despite her being just a young girl, no one objected to the score. To this day I have never heard of anyone that was there say she didn’t deserve that ten.
5x World Champion Carissa Moore Stepping Away From Competitive Surfing
With more than 25 years of writing about surfing, the ocean and action sports, Jake Howard continues to share stories, profiles and issues that shape the surfing world. One of the premier subject-matter experts in the field today, he's savvy in the ways of print, digital and social media, his breadth of work is expansive. Getting his start writing Surfline surf reports and recording the phone reports for 976-SURF in the late '90s, Jake served as the managing editor for Surfer Magazine in the early 2000s before moving on to launch RedBullSurfing.com and cover surfing for ESPN and the X Games. Over the years, Jake has also enjoyed time behind the edit desk at The Surfer's Journal, as well as the World Surf League, where he worked as the Senior Editor for a number of years. Beyond producing editorial content, Jake has served as a digital marketer and copywriter for iconic surf brands such as Quiksilver, Roxy and Rip Curl. Writing thousands of pages of copy for Surfline, he has deep SEO experience as well. The surf columnist for the San Clemente Times, Jake continues to dedicate himself to the culture and history of the sport through his involvement with the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center in San Clemente.