Women meet demands of big-wave competition

This season, women are making waves. We may not have elected our first female U.S. president, but on Nov. 11 another glass ceiling was broken when the first World Surf League women’s big-wave championship event was held at the legendary Peahi on Maui’s north shore.

This being Jaws, that ceiling also broke atop many contestants as they navigated glass moguls on walls chopped up by the brisk tradewinds. Paddling into waves that break so fast and powerful that the norm, until about five years ago, was to be towed in with personal watercraft, it was a giant step — that is, drop — for womankind.

The women’s and men’s events alternated throughout the one-day competition in prime, towering conditions.

“Peter Mel, the WSL big-wave commissioner, was calling wave heights of 30-foot-plus, faces in the 40- to 50-foot range,” said Dave Prodan, the organization’s vice president of communications, when I caught up with him by phone Monday.

Maui residents Paige Alms and Billy Kemper won the women’s and men’s challenges with masterful rides that scored 7.83 and 10, respectively.

Asked how she felt out there, “I felt pretty calm,” Alms, 28, wrote in an email. “All the hard work was done, so it really was all about having fun!”

During the live-stream coverage Nov. 11, it seemed as if officials were trying to choose less extreme conditions for the women but ended up sending them out into some of the most radical waves of the day. “Swells of that magnitude tend to ebb and flow, and certainly when the women went out for their opening heat, the swell energy was pulsing,” Prodan said.

Yet as they paddled for position, the women smiled, looking remarkably relaxed and supportive.

“For sure! That’s how the big-wave community is,” Alms said. “We are all encouraging one another, cheering for each other!”

AT 16 I surfed my first big waves at Ricebowls, the deep-water break on Oahu’s South Shore. It was a rite of passage for the Tonggs Gang. I was the only girl, but my coaches — Donny Mailer and Tomi Winkler — insisted I could do it.

They said Ricebowls was 8 to 10 feet when they took me out and taught me the lineup, triangulating off the Diamond Head lighthouse and high-rise condos that looked very, very small and far away.

I’ll never forget pushing to get under the shadows of those pitching lips, the long, vertiginous drops and the horrific wipeout, getting clubbed in the head by a glass fist and held down until I nearly blacked out.

But Donny was there to haul me up onto his board while Tomi scrambled to retrieve mine.

What touches me in retrospect, although it irritated me then, was that when I made a wave, the guys just shrugged.

It takes a neighborhood.

AT PEAHI, Alms “took off on waves that could have had her perform with a solid result against the men,” Prodan said.

So will WSL hold a coed big-wave contest next?

“Um, it’s possible,” he replied, but “at the moment the framework is based on how we operate the championship tours, and there are more men surfers than women.”

Then Prodan added something that struck me: “Some of these girls had never surfed Jaws before.” Peahi breaks only a few times a year, and some of the contestants live as far away as Australia and France.

Even if they do make it for a swell, “they may not be able to get the waves they need to practice in such a competitive lineup.”

So on a day when Jaws veteran Keala Kennelly was injured, along with fellow big-wave riders Emily Erickson and Laura Enever, several women risked their lives just to try the place.

In Hillary Clinton’s concession speech, she reassured little girls that they deserve every opportunity to pursue and achieve their own dreams.

In a radio interview, a sobbing student at Wellesley College said, “We put on our pantsuits and we fight on.”

Likewise, female big-wave surfers will put on their inflatable life vests and charge again.

Whether the arena is politics or Peahi, winning isn’t everything.

“In the Lineup” features Hawaii’s oceangoers and their regular hangouts, from the beach to the deep blue sea. Reach Mindy Pennybacker at mpennybacker@staradvertiser.com or call 529-4772.