Mindy Pennybacker: Women gaining ground in surfing

It’s a rare sight these days: a perfect, empty wave in all its wild, riderless glory.

Today is St. Patrick’s Day, when my husband Don and I play our fraying cassette of “Irish Heartbeat” with Van Morrison and the Chieftains and remember our only trip to Ireland, in May 1985.

Driving the Dingle Peninsula on a hot, sunny day, we were amazed to see long, symmetrical, beguiling waves breaking beyond the golden sands of Inch with nary a sign of a surfer.

Four years earlier, on a sunny, cold January day on another Celtic island — a small one lying off France — we observed massive, tubular waves breaking in a cliff-ringed arena bigger than Waimea Bay: again, no one in the water, although the French have known from wetsuits since Jacques Cousteau.

Nowadays, both sites on both islands, along with countless other formerly fallow breaks around the world, are swarmed year-round with surfing locals and adventure tourists, just like Hawaii.

In 2012, the International Surfing Association estimated there were 35 million surfers worldwide.

Eighty-one percent were male and 19 percent were female.

While surfing continues to soar in popularity, shown on network prime time last summer in its debut as an Olympic sport, where Hawaii’s Carissa Moore won gold, women are still racing to catch up in a male-dominated sport that has historically excluded them.

They’re catching up fast, charging big waves from Peahi to Waimea to Nazare, executing perfect tube and aerial rides, and winning equal prize purses and equal access to compete at prestigious event sites formerly reserved for men.

In February, the first women’s world championship tour event was held alongside the men’s at Oahu’s Banzai Pipeline; the history-making winner was North Shore native Moana Jones Wong.

However, the first women’s surf competition at Pipeline was the Women’s Pipeline Bodyboarding Championship, in 1990, said “Banzai” Betty Depolito, who cofounded the event, which sometimes fields women shortboarders, too.

In this year’s contest, held Feb. 28 with six countries represented, “Lilly Pollard (Australia) and Leila Alli (Brazil) got the sick tube rides of the day,” while “Ayaka Suzuki Crilley (Japan) scored with solid spins and rolls,” said “Banzai” Betty Depolito,who organized the event with Carol Philips, Faith Wenzl, Jenn Marr and Traci Effinger; Depolito also runs the Red Bull Women of the Bay big-wave competition.

The bodyboarders’ contest saw some big waves, “with some gnarly 8 foot sets barreling through,” Depolito reported in an email.

Pollard won first place, with Jessica Becker (Brazil) as runner-up and Crilley taking third; Hawaii’s Aarya Tabalno, 16, made the semifinals in her first international competition.

The event was dedicated to the memories of Josie Over, an actor, passionate bodyboarder and supporter of the event, and Hawaii Congresswoman Patsy Mink, who coauthored the Title IX Amendment Education Act 50 years ago.

Women have made great strides — and rides — since then.

Still, there are only 21 women vs. 45 men on the 2022 WSL championship tour.

March is Women’s History Month, and, in honor of International Women’s Day, March 8, all the surfers competing at the WSL MEO Pro Portugal championship event wore jerseys bearing the names of women who had inspired them.

Moore, currently ranked world No. 2, and Seth Moniz, world No. 5, picked fellow Hawaiian surfer Rell Sunn.

Malia Manuel saluted fellow Kauaian Bethany Hamilton, who also inspired others, including this year’s MEO Portugal winner, Griffin Colapinto.

Joao Chianca of Brazil picked Silvana Lima, who represented Brazil at the Tokyo Olympics alongside Tatiana Weston-Webb, who sits at world No. 3 after winning the MEO Portugal.

But not all the heroines were surfers.

Barron Mamiya, a North Shore native who made the tour as an injury replacement, won the Sunset Pro and is tied with Kelly Slater for world No. 2, chose mixed martial artist Rose Namajunas.

Hawaii’s Ezekiel Lau picked pro soccer player and Olympic gold medalist Natasha Kai.

Among the Hawaii rookies, Gabriela Bryan chose Shelby Longley, a Kauai community volunteer; Bettylou Sakura Johnson named pro wrestler Ronda Rousey, and Luana Silva selected Sky Brown, the world’s youngest skateboarding pro.

Hawaii’s Imaikalani deVault picked Olympic snowboarder Chloe Kim.

Tennis players Naomi Otsaka and Billie Jean King were also named.

But most heartwarming of all were the personal testimonials given by two young men to their first heroines and surf teachers.

North Shore native and two-time world champ John John Florence saluted his mother Alex Florence.

Australia’s Ethan Ewing commemorated his mother Helen Ewing, a winner of the pro surf contest at Bells Beach, Australia, who died when he was 6.

Although he was so young when he lost her, he remembers and can envision her clearly, a smiling Ewing said in a WSL video.

Having lost my own mother 14 years ago on the Ides of March, I was reminded that, from now until the end, nothing matters more than aloha — love.

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Reach Mindy Pennybacker at mpennybacker@staradvertiser.com