wait . . . wait . . . wait . . . Young Bettys get ready for just the right wave at surf camp. From left: Elli McGrane, Phoebe Snyder, Katie Kahn, Katie Baumann and Clare Rea.

go! go! go! With practice and patience, each girl will learn to stand on her board. From left: Elli, Phoebe, Katie K., Katie B. and Clare.

By ALICIA CALDWELL, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published August 4, 2002

Young surfer girls making waves in the world of exteme sports? They will if one grown-up Betty has anything to say about it.

INDIATLANTIC -- It is the end of the day, and six sunburned girls frolic in the pool like sea otters.

Kathy Jo Anderson eases herself into a chair, massaging a knee that is sore from 40 years of jumping off surfboards onto the hard sands of Florida's Atlantic beaches. She shakes her head and laughs at the girls, who after a long day of surfing, are seeing who can swim the fastest.

Anderson is talking about what she hopes these girls will take away from her surf camp, besides the ability to get up on a wave.

"When you can conquer the waves, you can certainly handle a few guys in the boardroom," she said. "I want them to know that all things in life are possible."

Katie B., 10, muscles her board back to the beach.

She wants them to be confident. She wants them to find a passion in life they can fall back on when things aren't going well. And if they shred waves with the same courage and ferocity as the guys, they should get the same rewards, something she didn't get.

Anderson, who lives in Jupiter, has more than 50 surfboards and a house full of trophies she has won hanging 10 from here to Waikiki. It has been a full career.

But this 52-year-old woman and East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame legend is only now trying to catch the biggest wave of her life, the explosive popularity of extreme sports: skateboarding, snowboarding, wakeboarding and, of course, surfing. She and the other women of the Betty Series Surf Camps are trying to marry extreme sports and girl power and get a little something for themselves along the way.

For years, Anderson and the other East Coast Hall of Fame surfers have watched men get, not only the best waves, but the vast majority of surfing prize money and endorsements.

"We just wanted to promote women in all areas of sport," Anderson said. "We wanted to see income levels go up for people like me who have been surfing for 40 years. It's terribly unfair."

The very name of the camp -- a Betty was a 1960s term for the beach-bound girlfriend of a surfer boy -- is a jab at traditional expectations for girls.

This summer, more than 80 girls and women have gone to Betty surf camps, and the 18-month-old Betty empire continues to expand. The camps target all ages. Some camps and clinics are specifically for younger teens and preteens. Some are for grown women only.

The corporate world, it seems, has taken notice.

The surf camp managed to get sponsorships enabling them to offer $10,000 in cash and $15,000 worth of prizes for an all-female surfing competition in Virginia Beach next weekend. They'll do a similar competition at Sebastian Inlet in January. Next month, they'll introduce Betty Gear, a line of clothing for girls and women.

They're grateful for the confluence of popular culture that seems to be adding to the girl surfing momentum. Disney's animated film Lilo & Stitch shows Hawaiian surfer girl scenes and though it targets a younger audience, it probably doesn't hurt the cause. Sheryl Crow's popular video, Soak up the Sun, features female surfers, and there is buzz around Universal's Blue Crush, a film about surfer girls, coming to theaters Aug. 16.

Anderson and the others who teach the Betty Series see it all as good karma for what they're trying to do: harness the pop culture appetite for their lifestyle.

"It's coming big time," Anderson said. "It is. If we make it an organization for women and by women, we can make it work."

Katie Baumann, from left, Phoebe Snyder, Katie Kahn and Clare Rea prepare to take their long boards to the water.

Wahines

"Paddle! Paddle! Paddle!" Melody DeCarlo calls to Katie B. "Wait until you feel the wave actually pick you up."

It is the first morning of surf camp and Katie B., whose last name is Baumann but is called Katie B. to avoid confusion with another Katie, is trying to catch her first wave.

Katie B. paddles furiously, snaps to her feet and quickly "goes out the front door," disappearing for a moment under the roiling surf.

The 10-year-old from Lake Park comes up, her wet braids clinging to her head. She looks concerned. She stood up a little too early and was dead in the water when the wave creamed her.

DeCarlo, 50, of Satellite Beach, is reassuring and firm -- confidence born of nearly four decades of surfing. She tells Katie B. to stay on her stomach for the next one.

Paddle to keep up with the wave and feel it lift you. DeCarlo is assessing skill levels and adjusting her instructions. Instead of making Katie B. repeat the exercise and telling her what she's done wrong, DeCarlo realizes that Katie B. needs to know what a wave feels like as it comes up underneath her.

This is an important moment for Katie B., DeCarlo said. Surfing can be scary, especially if you get hurt. Repeated failures, and she could decide to sit on the beach. DeCarlo backs her up a step on the learning curve, and without criticizing, gives Katie B. the tools to get it right.

Before long, she is up on a wave and stands for 5 or 10 seconds before she is on the beach. The look on her face is sheer joy.

By lunchtime, all six of the girls have stood up on the boards and surfed a wave. If you think it is easy, borrow a board and try it. Their enthusiasm is contagious. They are ebullient, encouraging each other with whoops of joy and thumbs up as one after the other, they each catch a wave.

It's a subtlety, you might even call it a basic of being a good teacher. The Betty camp women won't let the girls fail by asking them to do things that are too hard.

After bolting down their lunches -- turkey or ham sub sandwiches -- they are soon back in the water.

They bob together in a ring, their heads slick from sea water. A sand fight starts and they throw globs of gray at one another, giggling madly.

Steady as she goes, Clare Rea, 11, gives it her best shot, rising on her board.

It's time for another session and they sprint out of the surf to grab their boards.

Wahine is a Hawaiian word for girl surfer. By the end of the day, they are all wahines.

"There's a sisterhood," said Lisa Muir-Wakley, of Navarre, who was inducted into the East Coast Hall of Fame Legends last year. "Riding your first wave is a memory you never lose."

Soul surfing

Betty stands by the pool. She is tall and shapely. Her hair is perfect. Her smile is happy and poised.

And she is fake.

Anderson bought her on e-Bay for $100.

Bring out big Betty! Surfer girls watch as instructor Missy Sixberry brings out the camp’s life-size mascot.

The surf camp women never set out to make the mannequin their mascot, it just happened. Anderson had bought her for a friend who collects movie star mannequins.

Anderson has never figured out who the mannequin is supposed to be, though she looks a little like the 1930s actor Jean Harlow. They brought the 6-foot Betty to a couple of surf competitions, where she attracted a lot of attention.

"She's the sex goddess," said Anderson, rolling her eyes. "Men on the beach are always patting her butt."

It's an inside joke to the Betty women. If you get it -- that Betty's perfect image is a joke -- then you get them.

These old surfer chicks have a good bit of gray hair and skin creased by the sun and maybe they're not all a size 6 anymore.

But during the weekend camp, none of the women complains about their weight or say anything negative about their looks. Given the harsh things women routinely say about themselves, this is unusual.

Betty women are more likely to talk about their new boards, the sharks at Sebastian; or how they're overdue for some soul surfing, a loose surfing tour that includes hooking up with old friends at favorite beaches. It is not about competition. It's about feeding your soul.

And when they're paddling hard to catch a wave, snapping to their feet and nimbly walking up and down the board, their grace knocks decades off the ages on their drivers' licenses.

It doesn't mean they've never had bad relationships with men or money trouble, but these women are doing something they love and are at peace with who they are. And it shows.

They don't fear getting old. Their greatest fear might be an injury or accident that would keep them out of the water.

They are well-known on the east coast surfing scene, which is a long-standing subculture. To be one of them, you need a cell phone and to be hooked up with surfer friends.

On a day when the waves are questionable, you see surfers driving from one parking lot to the other, boards sticking out of sunroofs, backs of pickup trucks, in vans and on overhead racks. They call each other, comparing conditions. To a newcomer, it is amazing how different the waves can be on beaches that are only 5 miles apart.

Another part of this lifestyle is sharing -- information, granola bars, water, sunscreen and quarters for parking. There is a definite bohemian quality to this lifestyle.

Muir-Wakley, 47, has a broad smile and an easy way about her. She is almost embarrassed about how lucky she is to have the freedom to surf all day while her friend DeCarlo works the night shift at a hospital so she can surf in the mornings.

And even better is the fact that Muir-Wakley's husband is a retired airline pilot, which means she can fly free to the beach of her choice. She can catch an 8 a.m. flight out of North Florida and be in Hawaii by mid-afternoon. Muir-Wakley borrows a board from one of her friends, and she's able to get in a session before dinnertime.

Muir-Wakley, who has been surfing since she was a teen, grew up with a father who was in the military and who was a hurricane hunter; he nurtured her adventurous soul. Her husband, she said, understands her need to surf.

Hers has been a full life, and she figures that the toll the sun has taken on her skin and hair is a small price to pay for everything that surfing has given her. She cannot imagine life without surfing.

"I see myself someday as an old lady, living in a condo in Waikiki, surfing every day," she said.

X style

The Betty camp is more than paddling and catching waves.

It's a big surfing slumber party.

This weekend, the girls are crashing at Missy Sixberry's house, which is a couple of blocks from the beach. Sixberry is Anderson's daughter and the marketing and organizational force behind the Betty operation.

In the middle of the living room there is a surf board, three cell phones, and a bar of surf wax. A surfing video is playing on the television.

The girls eat pizza. They talk about music. They like Sugar Ray, Blink 182 and No Doubt. They can live without 'N Sync and Britney Spears.

Katie K., the other Katie -- her last name is Kahn -- is from Singer Island. Katie K. is the only experienced surfer in the bunch. She is talking about what boys think about her surfing.

"They act really jerky, like I don't know what I'm doing," Katie K., 11, said indignantly. "They, like, have an attitude problem.

"Even today, these guys at the beach were like 'Fall, fall,' when I was standing up on my board."

Said Katie B: "They think it's a boy thing."

Kathy Jo Anderson, 52, is an East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame legend. One of her goals with the Betty camp is to raise awareness of the importance of extreme sports for girls and women.

The girls roll their eyes in disgust. Phoebe Snyder, 12, braids Katie B.'s hair. Sixberry, who is constantly on the prowl for marketing focus groups, brings out surf clothes to see what the girls think.

Their two favorite shirts? One with the brand name "Hot Girls" emblazoned on the front, and another that says "I lie to boys."

Sixberry said that when she asked a bunch of 18- to 25-year-old women to talk about ideas for Betty logos and designs, she was shocked.

"They were coming up with logos that included boobs and were about sex," Sixberry said. "I said 'What are you doing? That is so not what we're about.' "

But she is not so naive as to believe that those pressures won't come to bear on the Betty operation if they go mainstream, which is their goal. Corporate America is a force to be reckoned with.

Witness the debate within the LPGA, the professional women's golf circuit, about whether players ought to be encouraged to use sex appeal to attract television viewers. And who doesn't have an opinion on the propriety of the role of Anna Kournikova as a tennis supermodel?

But Sixberry said there's a line that they won't cross. Betty, she said, is always going to be about sports and achievement and supporting women in pursuit of that.

"If corporate America wants to use us to sell sex, then we're going to say no," she said. "It's not what we're about and we're not going to let them make it about that."

The value of a girl

Clare Rea sits under a beach umbrella, absently patting sand she has piled on her legs.

She had tried to surf before the Betty camp.

"I went with my dad a couple of times," said the 10-year-old. "I didn't learn."

Fred Rea, 47, a software designer, has a mustache, a laid-back attitude and some deep-seated concerns about how easy it is for girls to get the short shrift when it comes to personal and professional opportunities.

He also has a round-about way of answering questions. In talking about why he has driven up from Vero Beach to bring Clare here, he starts with the day she was born.

"When I held her for the first time in the hospital, I looked down at her and said 'None of this 65 cents on the dollar bulls-- for you,' " he said.

He is referring to an oft-cited statistic on the wage gap between men and women -- that women earned 65 cents for every dollar that men made.

Rea, who has surfed since he was a boy growing up in Puerto Rico, doesn't take it personally that the Betty camp women succeeded so quickly in teaching Clare to surf while he didn't.

"There's a safety here," Rea said. "Girls can look at these women and say 'Here's somebody like me who is doing a rough and tumble thing.' "

To him, it's totally cool that she's up and shredding waves. It will be something they can share, and something that she can take with her when times get tough -- just like you learn to handle the odd series of big waves that catches you in the crush zone and pounds you.

Said Rea: "If a sleeper set comes up on you and you get through that, you can get through anything."

Betty Series Surf Camps

The Betty surf camps offer week-long, weekend and day surfing clinics for girls and women only. Locations vary based on demand. Prices are adjusted based on the length of instruction. For a five-day surf camp in Florida, two sessions per day, the cost is $500 per camper. The Betty organization is branching out to include snowboarding, wakeboarding and skateboarding. For more information, visit the Web site at www.thebettyseries.com or call Missy Sixberry at (321) 733-6582.

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