It's cold outside. Cold for Southern California anyway. Yet she still just stands there, captured by the surf, even as the wind kicks up grains of sand and sends ripples shivering over the sea.
Her long, black hair is matted against the back of her neck and wet suit, and droplets of water bead up against her goose-pimpled skin, which is naturally tanned year-round by her Filipino, Italian and Spanish heritage. Her feet have sunken into the cool sand like a tree's roots into the earth, for indeed the beach is the place her roots will forever remain planted.
Angie Conti has just finished a session at Salt Creek in Dana Point, her favorite local break, where the El Niño weather has brought in sets as large as 10 feet. At 21 years old, she is the highest ranking amateur female surfer in the world, 34th overall when matched against professionals. She also won the junior women's division of the U.S. Championships at Oceanside Harbor last July.
"It's freezing," she chatters out as the wind kicks up and blows her hair over her head. "Let's get out of here."
At 5-feet 5-inches, she mounts her 6-foot 1-inch Linden surfboard onto the roof of her car. Linden is one of her three sponsors, along with the Coral Reef wet suit she tossed in the trunk, and the GirlStar sunglasses she has resting on the bridge of her nose.
Sponsors can mean a lot to even the amateur surfer. Sponsors will often pay the $75 entry fee for each competition, just to get their surfer to show off their product.
Sponsors also set up the contests. Depending on the amount of money given, sponsors can make competitions bigger and worth more points, and for the professional, worth more cash.
But it wasn't sponsors that got Conti where she is today. She didn't even have that movie-dream, Hawaiian-style surfer childhood either, where dad put her on a board on Hawaii's North Shore before she could walk.
"My friend Danielle [Martin] and I started trying to stand up on our body boards back when we were in camp together," Conti said.
She and Martin were in elementary school at the time, and their competitive relationship with each other helped drive Conti into the surfing world. Though Conti didn't start surfing until she was 11, an old beginner in surfing years, she and Martin competed all the way through high school.
Conti and Martin had joined their respective surf teams at Capo Valley and Dana Hills high schools, and instead of surfing with each other, they began to surf against each other.
"Danielle being better than me made me try harder," Conti said, "though she still usually came out the winner.
"I remember my first contest—Capo vs. Dana," she said. "It was scary, I was like, 'Whoa, Salt Creek! That's where all the big guys surf!' You're supposed to catch three waves in your heat, and I didn't catch a single wave."
Salt Creek may have scared her then, but now it's her home break.
onti began flipping through her collection of CDs, with her Bob Marley and the Wailers' "Legend" album standing out as the only familiar title. She selected music by Tulku, a band with a decidedly catchy new-age groove of world sounds.
"I had gone overseas for a contest, and I was in a little shop in Portugal when I heard these guys playing over the speakers," she said as we pulled out of the Salt Creek parking lot. "I wanted to buy it there, but you'd have to be a millionaire to buy CDs in Portugal."
The cold had sent us back to Conti's San Clemente home, where she lives with her boyfriend, professional surfer Shawn Sutton. She and Sutton pay rent for a little room upstairs in the house of Sutton's very 90s family, comprising his father, step mother, real brother, half brother and step brother.
Conti and Sutton have that Gidget-Moondoggy relationship. He has not just been a boyfriend and a surfing partner (Conti screamed, "Oh my God, I've GOT to tell Shawn," when we drove south on Pacific Coast Highway to see that Doheny—yes, Doheny—was booming with 5-foot sets), but he was also a source of inspiration for her.
"I had always wanted to do a contest, but I didn't know what it was all about," Conti said. "After going to see Shawn's competitions, I learned a lot, and he helped me get into the water for a real contest."
Conti met Sutton the summer she was 18 when her friend introduced them to each other while surfing at Churches in San Onofre. Sutton had been living in Hawaii with his mother and was just visiting his father for the summer.
After a trip to Mexico for fun, sun and surf, the two began to hit it off and started dating.
At the time, Sutton hadn't yet turned professional, though he was on his way to becoming the West Coast Pro/Am champion and the Hawaiian Triple-Crown Rookie of the Year in 1995, as well as the Bud Tour champion in 1996.
Currently, he's ranked 30th in the world as a professional surfer on the World Championship Tour (WCT).
"Our first two years together he was here a lot, so we surfed together a lot," Conti said. "But last year he did both tours (the WCT and the World Qualifying Series). It's really hard to have a relationship like this, but it's worth it.
"There's a lot of benefits. I get to surf with someone who rips!" she said with enthusiasm. "He's not just my boyfriend, he's my best friend—what more could you ask for? I'm stoked."
he Sutton-Conti home is just what you'd expect. The garage is filled with at least 20 surfboards, mostly belonging to Sutton, of varying lengths, thicknesses and number of fins, with surfing posters and wet suits hanging on the walls.
The home itself is adorned with collectibles from Sutton's surfing excursions around the world, including hand-carved, wooden ceremonial masks brought back from South Africa and a sculpture of dolphins that was carved in Bali.
Scattered about the walls are pieces of marine art with flurries of colorful tropical fish and idyllic sunsets over the horizons, some with religious overtones.
"That one is famous," Conti says, nodding across the room to a painting of the Chinaman's Hat in Hawaii. It depicts the Hawaiian coast and a large hat-shaped rock breaching the surface, metaphorically resting on the head of a giant Chinaman sitting underwater. "Just about everyone in Hawaii knows that painting.
"Probably the best place I've ever surfed was at a secret spot over there in Hawaii," she says.
Sutton walks through the room with a load of laundry in his arms, and before he heads up the stairs Conti asks him if she should reveal the location. He shakes his head.
"If I tell you, I'd have to kill you," she says.
Conti said that although her favorite spot was in Hawaii, her dream spot to surf is Jeffries Bay in South Africa.
Because of the perfect conditions of the coastline, Jeffries Bay offers perhaps the longest rides in the world, as each wave breaks far off the shore and spans a tremendous distance without chopping into separate breaks.
"It's a point break, and it barrels and wedges forever," Conti said. "You can do a ton of maneuvers on just one wave."
Though Conti's travels haven't taken her to South Africa yet, she has had the opportunity to surf in Hawaii, as well as Europe, where she competed on the World Qualifying Series. It was in these competitions that she clinched her spot as the highest ranking amateur female surfer in the world and the 34th best when including professionals, which moved her up, way up, from last year's ranking as 116th.
"Shawn's birthday present to me was to pay for my ticket to get over there," she said.
While in Europe she surfed (and partied) in Portugal, Spain and France, where the latter country provided one of her favorite spots in the town of Hossegor.
"The waves were great and the water was warm, but everyone was naked—I mean butt naked," she laughs. "You could surf topless or naked or whatever, but I chose to keep my bathing suit on."
Next up for Conti is a competition here in California, at the Kahlua U.S Open in Huntington Beach. Because of the contest's strong sponsorship from Kahlua, it is a five-star meet, meaning more points for the surfers, more money, more professionals and bigger crowds.
"Everybody from everywhere is going to be there, from Australians to Europeans to Hawaiians," Conti said. "There's going to be big prize money for the winners."
That also means more competition for Conti, so she's getting the chance to prove herself. She will have a bit of an edge, for she's surfed at Huntington Beach before and says she loves the break. But even if she does win, she won't be able to accept the prize money because she's not a professional.
"I'm planning on going pro in a few years, though," she said, "at least after the year 2000. I won't turn pro until after I win every amateur competition I'm in, and I really want to be in the summer Olympics, too."
Meanwhile she has plans to transfer from Saddleback College to the University of California at San Diego and surf on its team.
But for now she's content with living in San Clemente with Sutton, surfing just about every morning and going to school at Saddleback.
Though she's been at the college for four years, she couldn't help but laugh when she realized she had only attended for three semesters. She didn't go at all last year because she was surfing.
She is currently enrolled in political science, English and fashion courses ("Just for the fine arts credit," she claims), and works at the YMCA in San Clemente.
She had worked at Trader Joe's as well, but recently quit because of the overload.
"I really needed the money for rent and fun and to pay for trips and entry fees, but now there's more time for surfing!" she laughs.
She's going to need that extra money if she's going to pursue her biggest dream though.
"I really want to live in Tahiti or the Caribbean," she says with a glimmer in her eye. "It will have everything I need: warm water, good waves and, of course, Shawn."
© 1999 Sanoe Kawaihaeke`a`ala
Get your own Free Home Page