"The SURFER Interview with Rochelle Ballard," by Ross Garrett, ran in the January 2002 issue of SURFER. Ballard, 30, a former liaison for the world tour, had become activist pushing to level the playing field for women's professional surfing. Meanwhile, she was still competing fulltime.

What was it like being an ambitious female surfer in the late 1980s before modern women’s surfing had come of age?

When I was growing up on Kauai, contests had just started at an amateur local level and it was this new, exciting thing. I surfed with the boys because there weren’t any women’s divisions. In Hawaii, boys and girls were equal in that way. The boys would respect us and they would look out for us. Maybe on the North Shore it was different because of all the photo hype, but for us it was just all about surfing.

I lived everywhere. My dad built a house when I was five on the west side in Waimea. My parents got divorced and my dad moved back to California. My mom got remarried to Bob French, who owns Brennecke’s Restaurant, and he owned a beach house and they still live there. Our neighbors are still the same. Margo Oberg lived down the street from me. Everyone still lives there. But then the street had 20 houses on it and now there are about 100.

As a three-time world champ, was Oberg an obvious role model?

She was. Except I didn’t know anything about the pro tour. It was more soulful back then, and there wasn’t a whole lot of information on the tour in the surf magazines. All I knew was what she told me. She said it was a lot of fun, that you got to go to cool places and you could win contests. So I had really nice thoughts about what the tour would be like. I had an autographed poster of Larry Bertlemann on my wall, wrote “Anything is Possible.” That was my inspiration right there. I was ambitious, I was a dreamer, and I wanted to be world champion.

When did you start pursuing a career as a professional surfer?

When I was 16 I went to the world amateur titles in Puerto Rico and got third. It was fun and I got to meet all these girls who surfed really well, like Pauline Menczer and Kathy Newman. I went back the next time and got fourth and decided I was going to turn pro. But I still hadn’t really grasped the concept. I was still debating about going to college.

With women’s endorsements and prize money at an all-time low, did you feel like you were really taking a chance?

Yeah. And when I first got on tour, I wasn’t into it. It was nothing like what I dreamed about, and nothing like what Margo told me.

We were surfing grovelly waves in the ‘90s and there was a ton of animosity between the men and the women. Up until then, I had never really experienced that. I grew up with Miguel and Cody Graham, and they used to pick me up every day to go surf. On tour, there was this male-female power struggle, and the women were bagged on a lot. It was a financial struggle as well. People said I was going to make money, and I got there and there wasn’t any money— and there weren’t any cool spots to surf. I wasn’t treated how I thought a professional should be treated, so I steered away from it for the first year and I took some time off.

Yeah, and I was over it. Then Bill [Ballard] and I got married and we were thinking about having a family, just cruisin’ island style. But then he came home one day and said I should try it again and see where it takes me. I still didn’t really believe that I had that kind of talent because I wasn’t confident enough in my surfing. We ended up going to the next contest in South Africa and I won, so we moved to the North Shore the next year.

When did you decide to commit to improving the women’s tour?

I was really shy when I first got on tour. I would go to ASP meetings and just listen to everybody. The first one I went to, one of the guys stood up and said, “We don’t want the chicks on tour with us anymore, how do we get them off?” I thought, “Is this for real?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I was staying and traveling with Kaipo [Jaquias], Isaac [Kaneshiro] and Larry Rios, all those guys. All that animosity and weirdness between men and women in the water—I hadn’t really experienced it. In Hawaii, the only difference was men were strong and women were graceful. I went into it so naive. I had no idea what I was doing or what it was about. But I knew that I wanted to help and there was something to be done to improve our sport.

What specifically did you think could be done?

It was unfair that we got thrown out into conditions that were unsurfable, basically. And that we had to wear these huge jerseys, the same one the men used, that didn’t even fit us and looked horrible. It started with little things, making subtle changes. And it took some work. The ASP didn’t want to spend extra money and couldn’t understand why we needed smaller jerseys when we could just wear the men’s.

What other change were you able to effect?

We were able to start the IWS (International Women's Surfing). It was founded by Kate Skarratt, Megan Abubo, Layne Beachley, Prue Jeffries and myself, and was established by the entire 2000 WCT women’s tour in order to unite and to stand up for our rights as athletes and what we felt was the best for our sport. For two years we fought a pretty gnarly battle and I never planned on being a warrior. But today, we have three stand-alone events: two Roxy Pros and one Billabong Pro. Actually, if it weren’t for Roxy and Billabong’s support we wouldn’t even have a tour.

What do you see as the future of women’s professional surfing?

I think we need more women-only events. It’s great that we have a couple of events with the men, but it becomes difficult.

Did you resign from your post as Women’s liaison for the ASP?

Yeah, I stopped doing that so I could concentrate on other things. ‘Cause it took over my life for some time.

There have been rumors circulating that you’re gearing up for a complete retirement from the tour to have a family.

I hate the word retirement, honestly, because I don’t feel that it’s retirement. It’s one of those things that because of the way the tour is set up, you have to either go full bore, or you can’t do it at all. I love competing, but I want to be able to go into another phase of my life as well with a new direction in surfing. But yeah, I don’t know when it’s going to happen. It could happen at the end of the year, it could happen in the middle of the year. I don’t have a set time. I’m just trying to refocus and set my priorities. [Note: Ballard stay on tour until the end of 2007.]

Do you feel like you’ve accomplished everything you set out to accomplish on tour and with professional surfing?

It’s always easy to say I’m not satisfied, that I didn’t do this or that, or that I should have done better. But then I look back to where I was and what my dreams were and all the things that I got to do in my career, and I’m satisfied and happy to be where I am. I’d rather be happy than win five world titles.

You’ve won three consecutive SURFER Polls but no world titles. Why is there such a disconnect between the public’s perception of ability and the ability to win contests?

Everybody knows that every session is different and that a 25-minute heat won't necessarily determine who’s the best surfer. I think it determines who’s the better competitor at that given moment, but a lot of times world champions can be lucky people. Waves just come to them. It happens all the time. But you can’t look for everything that makes a person who they are when they’re in a heat.

You did the surfing for the main character in last summer’s surf film 

. What has that film meant to women’s surfing?

I think it sets the tone for a new era in women’s surfing because it finally revealed what we are like, what our fears and challenges are and what it’s like to be a surfer girl. Now the general public and people who don’t surf know what it feels like. When we were doing press junkets, we had a bunch of TV and print people asking questions, valid questions, and it hit me: “Wow, they get it!” They actually understood what we’re doing out there. Watching 

 they got to come out into the water with us and experience what it was like to go under a wave and take the drop and get tossed around.

Do you feel like the Pipe event at the end of 

I do. I think we could have a Pipeline event and it doesn’t have to be eight- to 10-foot Second Reef. We can start surfing it when it’s four- to six-feet. You gotta start somewhere. When the men started surfing Pipe contests, they weren’t surfing it when it was super gnarly.

So do you think that women should be in the Pipe Masters now?

No. But I do think we should have an expression session so we could have the opportunity to ride it, to get our feet wet without all the boys frothing at the mouth and barking like pit bulls. I’m sure there would be some gnarly wipeouts. There would be some pullbacks. But hopefully there would be a sick barrel. The men are just so unbelievable nowadays that you almost can’t appreciate what they’re doing out there. People are looking at it like ho-hum, and meanwhile Bruce [Irons] is taking off halfway down the face. They just can’t even fathom what those boys are doing out there, whereas when we get out there, we make it look scary, because it is!

Women’s surfing has gotten a lot of mainstream media attention for the current high participation in women-only surf camps like Surf Diva. Do you think camps like that have added to the vitality and popularity of the sport for women?

I do, for sure. There are a ton of girls that want to have fun and want to be able to hang out with other girls who surf and find new surf buddies. In the early ‘60s there were surf clubs and they were the cool thing. They created camaraderie in the sport and a culture. Women were a part of it, but only to a certain extent. Even though it’s 2003, in a sense women are only now creating their own new energy and vitality in our surf culture. Not that they want segregation, but women feel different from men. There’s a bond we never really felt before. It was always just a survival thing.

What role does sexiness plays in women’s surfing? Does the ability to be perceived as sexy have anything to do with the booming popularity of the sport?

For sure it does. Surfing is a sexy sport. We live in a fantasy world. You drop your clothes and you’re in a bikini or boardshorts and you’re running out the door barefoot. We’re surrounded by the sun and the liquid energy of the ocean and white sand beaches and it’s such a fun lifestyle that it’s got to be sexy. It’s such a graceful sport and yet it’s aggressive too, and you use them at the right times and the right places and it’s glorious. Every woman wants to be sexy.

For a woman on the brink of retirement, you still sound pretty stoked.

I’m so excited. There are so many great things that I still want to be able to do. That’s the great thing about surfing. It doesn’t just end at competition. There’s so much more life within our sport. I’m all about doing things that are new and climbing over walls that have been there forever. Sometimes you have to break them down, but nowadays it’s easier to climb them. I’m tired of breaking ‘em down.

[Photo: Jeff Divine, Art Brewer, Pete Friedan, Brad Anderson]

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