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Amazing Grace
Malibu longboarder Kassia Meador dances her way into a whole new breed of professional surfers
by Alison Berkley
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January 19, 2001 - "I paid for my trip to Costa Rica by selling lollipops at my high school," 18-year-old Kassia Meador says nonchalantly, as if it were a simple solution to a simple problem. Her parents told her she couldn't compete in the Longboarding World Championships at Boca Barranca unless she raised the money herself, figuring it wouldn't be possible. She was 15 then, too young to get a job. "I swear to god. I raised 1,000 bucks. I just went to Smart and Final and got a big box of regular lollipops and sold them for a quarter each. I'd go home with these huge bags of change and just keep it in my room. Then at the end of the week, I'd go to the bank with all these quarters and dimes and nickels and just deposit them all. I was like, 'This is what I'm going to do. I don't care what it takes, I'm going.'"
She had been surfing for only a year at that point, but she was already good. In fact, she was really good. Good enough to raise more than a few eyebrows at Malibu Surfrider Beach, her homebreak and birthplace to many a longboarding legend. Good enough to win the junior division in the first contest she ever entered, a regional event in San-O. Four short years later, she's a full-fledged professional, surfing for Roxy, traveling the world and capturing the attention -- and hearts -- of male and female surfers alike. "She seems to have insinuated herself into the exclusive, inner-Malibu circle," Surfer magazine Editor Sam George recently wrote. "It occurred to me that this Kassia was a genuinely self-actualized surfer. She appeared to ride precisely what she wanted, how she wanted, just where she wanted -- and still earn the appreciation of the surfers around her."
Now only 18, Kassia also appears to be a self-actualized person. She has a calm and poise well beyond her years. It's an extraordinary comfort with herself, a relatively impressive attribute for a teenager from Fountain Valley, California, a white bread bedroom community just up the canyon from trendy Malibu. Aside from her conspicuous valley girl dialect (every other word is "like," "rad" or "I'm all") you'd never guess she just graduated from high school. She's hardly the stereotypical bleached blonde California surfer girl -- her chocolate brown hair is cropped short like a boy but it suits her, accentuating her slightly tilted almond-shaped eyes and flawless olive complexion.
Kassia's grace and poise as a surfer translates to her stature out of the water. There's no denying she has the kind of captivating look that people talk about. When she greets me at the front door of her parent's upscale suburban home, she is so slight I feel as though I could put my hand right through her. She is impossibly small-boned and delicate-looking, like a dancer. She is so petite that you get the feeling she could walk on air just as well as she can walk on water. The way she surfs is genetic -- it's not something you can just go out and learn.
She gives me the house tour and it's the "Brady Bunch" meets "Dawson's Creek". It's like every other house in the large inland development: spacious and very white, with cathedral ceilings and a swimming pool in the backyard. But it's lived in, with family photos cluttering the walls and the kid's stuff is everywhere -- skateboards and soccer balls and sneakers scattered about. She has a sister, who is flopped on the couch watching television still in her soccer uniform, and a brother, who isn't there, but I get a sense of him from the dozens of photos that are literally at every turn. Her bedroom is another shocking reminder of her age. The walls are painted a deep shade of blue "to look like the ocean" and there are posters and girly knick-knacks that clutter the spacious room. It's weird to think that this kid has traveled all over the world but she hasn't even lived in her first apartment yet.
We go back down to the kitchen where she starts pulling a bunch of freeze-dried fruit from the freezer and packs them into Ziploc storage bags for her next surf trip. "I'm vegan, and the last time I went to the Maldives, I couldn't eat anything," she explains. She won't eat meat or dairy, but sushi is OK. And she loves coffee. I can't help but wonder if a vegan diet is sufficient enough for her activity level, considering her incomprehensibly small size. But I decide to keep that question to myself.
"All that surfing stuff happened so fast," she explains, offering me some frozen green grapes from a Tupperware container. "It wasn't quite overnight, but it felt like it. I was surfing every day and things just started to happen. It was a total whirlwind. I totally wasn't expecting it. One minute I'm just hanging out surfing every day, and the next minute, I'm just like, 'Woah, I'm going to the Maldives tonight.'" She means that literally -- her flight is scheduled to leave that very night from LAX at 11 p.m. and she hadn't even packed yet. She would miss the senior prom, too -- a decision that was not all that difficult to make.
"Still being in high school is so weird," she says. "I have two lives. I have the high school scene and then I have this separate life. I'm a senior, so everyone is always asking me where I'm going to college. I kind of feel like a pile. I'm like, 'Oh, my god, I'm not going anywhere. I'm just going to go hang out and surf.' But at the same time, I feel so fortunate to be able to do something I love."
If Kassia loves surfing, surfing loves her, too. She's come up the ranks at a time when women's longboarding is exploding, contrary to its shortboarding counterpart where female pros are viewed as burly, gnarly, extremely competitive and, for lack of a better word, unfeminine. Longboarding, on the other hand, has produced a crop of athletes that everyone -- men and women alike -- admire. The sport seems more accessible to women because grace and balance are just as important as strength and courage. Kassia and her cronies, girls like Belen Connelly, Mary Bagalso and Daize Shayne have shown female surfers everywhere that there is an avenue more within their reach than the testosterone-driven world of shortboarding. These girls are great role models. They're great models, period. As pathetic as it might sound, the reality is that they're good at what they do and they look good doing it. For some reason, that actually matters in the surfing world. The combination is priceless.
If Kassia knows it, she doesn't let on. Add humility and loyalty to the list of characteristics I mentioned earlier. Unlike so many pro surfers, she's never felt like she had anything to prove. In fact, when Roxy first called her with an offer, she turned it down. "I actually won one of their contests last year and they tried talking to me then, and I was like, 'Nope, I'm over it. I already have a sponsor.' I was riding for Blink. They were my first sponsor, and I was super stoked. I was like, 'Nope, I'm gonna be loyal.'" Eventually, money talked. There were too many trips and too much opportunity to say no. Besides, she's the quintessential Roxy girl -- a noseriding princess who looks good in a bikini.
She also wins. Like the day I drove up to Malibu to watch her compete in the Margaritaville Longboarding Championships. When I first pulled up, I almost turned around because the surf was so small -- like less than a foot. But that's no matter when you weigh less than 100 pounds and ride a board that's 9 feet long. She cross-stepped and nose rode every wave from the point all the way to the beach, tucking into tiny barrels and making the impossible look impossibly easy. She won $5,000 -- the most prize money awarded a female longboarder to date.
Now she's done with high school and it's time to cruise. Timing is another thing she has on her side. She's riding shotgun in the women's movement, and it's just starting to pick up speed. There are the photo trips like this one to the Maldives, and even the contests are fun. "There are just a few of us who go to the contests, and we're the only girls. It's really tight. We're all super killer friends. We have so much fun, we just cruise and hang out and drive around."
But it's not about the contests. It's about longboarding. Kassia's testament could make even the most devout shortboarder want to jump on a log. "I like the glide that you feel," she explains wistfully. "It just feels really good. It's rad when you walk to the end of the board and look over and there's nothing below you but water. It's so smooth and graceful, and I love how it looks. When you get on that right spot on the wave, it just takes off. It's magical."
It's as magical as her life may be, perhaps. From nickels and dimes and lollipops to photo shoots in the Indian Ocean, one thing's for sure: it's not just her plane that's taking off tonight -- it's the rest of her life.
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