TEEN GIRL SURFERS FIGHTING FOR EQUAL SURF TIME AT COMPETITIONS

  • by: Amanda Co
  • recipient: SUE LISTER, CAROLYN KRAMMER, WESTERN SURFING ASSOCIATION, SCHOLASTIC SURF SERIES

TO THE SCHOLASTIC SURF SERIES AND WESTERN SURFING ASSOCIATION, Sue Lister & Carolyn Krammer:

My name is Zoe Morgan. I am twelve years old and I am a surfer on the Paul Revere Middle School surf team. I am writing this to you for me and on behalf of all the girl surfers on our competitive teams here in Santa Monica and Brentwood, their moms and mentors who are signing this petition to implore you to add EQUAL TIME AND EQUAL SPACE FOR GIRLS at all of your surf competitions this year and going forward.

I started surfing when I was 9 and I have been surfing ever since. When I first went to Paul Revere, there wasn’t a surf team, so my friend and I joined the Lincoln Middle School Surf team. The next year (2014), we started a surf team at Revere with the Surf Academy. 50 kids joined and 20 of them were girls. When we started competing, I realized that there were only 3 spots for girls to compete and 9 for boys at your contest . I knew that competing helped our surfing skills, so I was really looking forward to it. At the competitions, I would look at the list of competitors from our school. I saw that the girls’ list would be filled and have alternates and I knew that even more girls wanted to compete, but when I looked at the boys’ side, the list wasn’t even filled up.

This is unfair for reasons I shouldn't even have to explain, but allow me to:

We girls work just as hard, we practice many times every week in every kind of weather, and we RIP! Several of us won championship awards last year! Girls are starting to participate in surfing and the surf team more, this year we will have more than 20 girls on our team, a ratio of nearly 50/50. Our other area schools have even more.

We need more spots for all of us to compete. Competing is just one part of surfing, but it gives us all something to work towards and an opportunity to get recognized. Even though we are competing, we support each other and get to know surfers from other teams. It’s a lot of fun and I wish more girls could be a part of it.

So for these reasons, we all, the undersigned, ask you, competition organizers, to catch up with the times and let us rip just as often and freely as you allow the boys to . We should not have to sit in the wings while empty spots sit there because there are not as many boys competing and girls are sidelined because, well just because we are GIRLS. We address this to you now, urgently, as we wish for this change to be made prior to the first contest this season. We await your answer with anticipation not without interest in how two women will rule on our request.

You can see all the support we are getting by visiting our facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/EQUAL-TIME-for-GIRLS/1686288124923981

Please contact our mentor and coach Marion Clark with some GOOD NEWS for us girls.


We the undersigned:

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