Outdoors

This queen of extreme leaves all in wake

At 19, wakeboarding superstar Dallas Friday rides waves to fame and acclaim.

By DAVE SCHEIBER
Published November 27, 2005

ORLANDO - You would expect to find the top female wakeboarder in the world making waves on such a balmy afternoon, practicing one of her daredevil, upside-down, midair twists in the sport she rules with cool moves and an equally cool name.

But Dallas Friday is immersed in a different move at the moment: into her scenic, lakeside home.

It's the kind of impressive spread most people would never dream of owning at age 19: complete with a separate guest house where Friday will reside, the spacious main digs she'll rent out and a stunning view of Lake Holden that always beckons.

"I've pretty much been here all day for a week. My mom's done the painting, and I've been cleaning the sideboards and dusting and working in the yard," says Friday, who, despite her 5-foot-2, 102-pound frame, is a giant of the action sports genre.

Now she's trying a new maneuver: pulling weeds.

It's not exactly the display of acrobatic wizardry that earned her ESPN's ESPY Award as top action sports athlete of 2004 - the first woman to win it - or the dazzling skill that made her the first woman to earn $1-million in the male-dominated sport, a challenging hybrid of water-skiing and surfing.

But the Michael Jordan of women's wakeboarding has strict orders from the doctor to follow.

In October, Friday hurt her back in the semifinals of the Wakeboard World Championships in Australia. She couldn't move, and for several hours, the intense pain made her worry she had rebroken a vertebrae from a 2002 wakeboard accident.

An ambulance raced her to a Sydney hospital, where she learned she had pulled muscles throughout her back. It kept her from defending her 2004 title and has forced Friday to do something lately that doesn't come easy: slow down.

She may skip next weekend's season-ending U.S. Pro-Am Championships in the Keys so she can return strong in 2006 to a sport she basically fell into six years ago.

"If I couldn't ride," she says, "it would kill me."

* * *

Away from the water, she looks like a typical teen girl at the local mall: low-rider jeans, stylish T-shirt, ballcap pulled over blond-streaked hair that frames her tanned face.

Her demeanor is down to earth. But on a wakeboard, Friday is a whirlwind of aerial intensity.

When she's on her game, nobody can touch her.

"There isn't anyone pushing Dallas, so we don't know how good she could actually be," says her longtime coach, Mike Ferraro, who also coaches many of the sport's best male pros. "The only way Dallas Friday will be beaten is if she beats herself. She does a whole group of tricks that the other girls won't even try. She just has this amazing drive to be the absolute best she can be.

"If you want a parallel, think Annika Sorenstam."

Friday is so far ahead of other female wakeboarders she essentially competes against herself. For motivation, she trains with her male counterparts, who rave about her gutsiness and aggressive style.

"She can throw down runs that are so good, she can almost compete with the top guys right now," says the No. 1-ranked male pro, Josh Sanders of Australia.

She dreams of competing against the top men one day, but that would require her to leave the women's division and lose her standing. So for now, her energy is spent dominating the women's bracket.

In August, Friday won her fourth-straight gold medal at the Olympics of her sport, the X-Games, landing her sixth medal overall dating to her rookie year at age 13. Her dozens of other titles include three Vans Wakeboarding Pro Championships in a row and a U.S. Masters crown.

Also on her extensive resume: Voted "Florida's Fittest Female" in 2002 by Florida Sports magazine (what the heck, she can do 30 pullups the hard way) and named Wake Boarding magazine's best female rider four consecutive years.

Now the young woman with the unique name - honoring her aunt Dallas and the small North Carolina hometown of her father, Robin Friday - is riding a pop culture wave to fame and acclaim.

Friends kiddingly call her Houston Thursday, sometimes Big D or Little D. Her license plate reads "D Friday." But most just know her as Dallas.

"When I was growing up, people would say, "Is that your real name?' and I'd say, "Yeah,' and they'd go, "C'mon!"' she recalls. "I didn't really like it till I was 13, 'cause it was so different. But once I turned 13 and kinda matured, I was like, "I love my name."'

It's getting lots of attention in the burgeoning realm of extreme sports. Although wakeboarding isn't nearly as big as, say, snowboarding or motocross, the sport - heavily rooted in the Orlando area with its many lakes - is growing. And Friday is helping.

Her efforts, thanks to an array of sponsorships and steady prize money, have made her wealthy. Friday has earned enough cash to buy - aided by her Realtor mom - two lakefront houses and one condo as investments.

"She was spending too much money at first - $6,000 a month on her credit card - so I said, "This is crazy. You need to invest this,"' Darla Friday says. "I told her she'd thank me for that. And she does."

* * *

Her parents knew early on that she was going places, such as up the walls of their house.

"When she was 4, she used to use her hands and feet and shimmy up this one hallway," her mother says. "Dallas was like a monkey."

She did a good job keeping up with her two older siblings, brothers Robin and Chad. And in grade school, her competitive side showed, as she routinely beat the boys in her class in distance runs. "She wanted to be the best at what she did, or she didn't want to do it," Darla says.

Gymnastics seemed to be the ideal outlet for her. Starting at 7, Friday poured herself into the sport. She went to school until 3, then practiced at a special school until 9 p.m. Eventually, she became a Level 10 gymnast, on a possible track toward the Olympics, highlighted with a gold medal in the Southeast Region floor exercise competition.

But national competition was growing harder. Friday didn't win as regularly and then began to lose her passion for it. So her coach told her to take two weeks off to think things over. "During those two weeks, Dallas was lost because gymnastics had been her life," Darla says.

Brother Robin was a wakeboarder and suggested that his sister might like it. She was an expert at going airborne, so she gave it a try and was hooked. Perhaps it wasn't so surprising, considering Darla had performed as a water-skier at SeaWorld and her father's work revolves around water as a marine biologist.

Friday was doing flips the first day and progressed so fast that her mom took her to the Orlando WaterSports Complex and sought out Ferraro.

He tried to convince her to sign her daughter up for a beginner's class, explaining he only worked with pros. But she persisted, and he gave in.

"The biggest thing for women in this sport is if they're afraid, because I can't teach them if they are," Ferraro says. "I could see right away that Dallas was fearless. Second, I wanted to see how hard a worker she was. Well, she was doing 750 situps and 750 pushups a day in gymnastics, so that was no issue. The third thing I look for is talent."

Ferraro was sold on the spot. Friday worked tirelessly, and success came quickly. She earned a silver medal in her first year at the X-Games, and it's been a steady progression upward since, except for injuries. The worst came midway through the 2002 season, when her vertebrae was damaged from gradual stress on her back. After three months in a brace, Friday returned to form in 2003.

Balancing schoolwork with her increasing wakeboard travels was tough. So after 10th grade at Boone High, she homeschooled and earned her GED.

Friday lived with her parents until she turned 18 and, until recently, shared a house on Lake Holden with Sanders and his girlfriend. In fact, a half dozen top male pros live nearby her along the lake. She enjoys the camaraderie of the group - riding with the guys constantly, practicing new stunts and working to improve her style and technique.

"I'm always pushing myself to do better and always critiquing myself," she says. "It drives me crazy if I don't do as well as I should, even when I win and people are complimenting me."

Being so far ahead of the pack has a price. At times, Friday says, she has felt isolated, sensing that other female pros tend to keep their distance at events while rooting each other on. But even her competition would agree that she's raised the profile of women's wakeboarding - and made other riders try to raise their game.

"Dallas has been great for entire sport," says Patrick Wampler of World Publications, which produces the sport's magazine of record, Wake Boarding .

When she's not riding, Friday has a hard time sitting still. "I get lonely sometimes and bored out of my mind - I start biting my fingernails," she says, laughing.

For the most part, Friday fills her downtime playing with her golden retriever-chow mix, Bear, reading magazines, playing pingpong and pool or just hanging out at home with wakeboard pals and working with a personal trainer to rehab her back. To stay in shape, Friday does everything from Pilates to boxing.

"I have a good right hook," she says.

And the only one who can knock her off her feet, it seems, is Friday herself. Take two months ago. She had just celebrated her 19th birthday by buying some Gucci high heels in downtown Orlando.

She was walking to her black Yukon Denali when her heel caught in a sidewalk crevice and, in a freaky Friday moment, down she went.

She wound up with a serious sprain to her right ankle. Although doctors said she might miss six weeks, she was back in three, winning the Pan-Am crown Sept. 24. But the bum ankle worsened Down Under, triggering her back problem and ending her unbeaten season at the Gravity Games and Worlds.

"I think I feel pressure to be out there for my fans and sponsors," she says. "But it's also me. I love competing and showing people what I can do."

Their reaction so far? Thank God it's Friday.

[Last modified November 27, 2005, 06:50:05]