Interview: Flagler Surf Team

By Nick McGregor

The Flagler Surf Team is on two missions. First, shock the surfing world at the NSSA (National Scholastic Surfing Association) National Championships this June.

Second, hope that performance shocks Flagler into recognizing it as an official team.

After a few dormant years, the team reenergized as a club in 2004. The competitive squad took second at the NSSA East Coast Championships in 2006, but in 2007 it wasn’t even organized enough to make it through an entire season.

All that changed this year, when longtime pro surfer (and former NSSA record holder) Eric Taylor came in to anchor the squad. At this year’s East Coast Champs, held in March at Sebastian Inlet, Flagler’s “A” Team rolled to a convincing overall victory, defeating seasoned opponents from UNF, UCF, UF, and DBCC. Taylor and teammate Ben McLeod placed first and second in the high-stakes College Men’s division, and now the team has its sights set on the NSSA National Championships, to be held at Salt Creek, Calif., a break in Southern California near Dana Point.

The Flagler Surf Team will make the journey west as the top-ranked East Coast collegiate crew, but more conspicuous is what they will travel without: no faculty sponsor, no coaches, no overflowing coffers. Just a self-organized, group-driven, community-backed grassroots effort to prove that tiny little Flagler College can in fact make a big splash on a crowded and cutthroat national stage.

DRIFT sat down to chat with Taylor, Andrew Gregorie, Bill Stanley, Adam Muller, and Mike Pimental about the group’s chances in California, receiving recognition from the powers-that-be at Flagler, and what surfing could mean for the college in the future.

D: How did this current version of the Flagler Surf Team begin?

AG: When I started as a freshman in 2004, my dad and I went to the school and talked to them about it. We started with a club, a couple people got together, and then we did some NSSA contests. We organized a six-man team, and from there we got the ball rolling. Next thing you know we had like four teams.

D: So have you guys received any recognition or support from the school?

ET: That’s one of the really sad things about it. The school doesn’t recognize us as a team or give us any support financially. It’s weird, because surfing is one of the main reasons a lot of kids go to Flagler.

D: Before this year, has the team participated in collegiate NSSA contests?

AG: Last year we didn’t do a team, but in 2006, we were the No. 1 team on the East Coast for total standings, and we got second at the NSSA East Coast Championships.

MP: And we won our conference.

AG: We went to Nationals in California that year, but everyone wasn’t ready for it.

D: Going into the NSSA East Coast Champs this year, were you confident the team could win?

ET: There weren’t really any new schools doing the East Coast Champs, so we knew what we were up against. And we were pretty confident, especially with the three of us (points to Adam and Bill) growing up surfing Sebastian Inlet.

AG: The first couple heats, everyone was completely dominating, getting firsts and seconds.

D: Did you guys have any women or longboarders competing?

ET: Marissa Guthrie did the women’s this year for us. And our longboarder was in Puerto Rico during the East Coast Champs. The contest was during our spring break, so a lot of the guys on the team went down to Puerto Rico. We were a little bit short.

D: Eric, did you and Ben’s top two placings secure enough team points to win the overall standings?

ET: I don’t even think that was it. In the first couple rounds, you get six points for a first place, 5 points for a second, 4 points for third, and so on. So it was those early rounds, when everyone on the team was placing first and second in their heats. That really helped us win.

D: How many surfers do you plan on taking to Nationals?

ET: It’s pretty much us five here, and Ben McLeod as well. You’re supposed to have two girls, but we only had Marissa surfing this year, so I don’t know if we’ll qualify to have another girl surf Nationals.

D: Do you feel like the team is ready for Nationals?

ET: The talent’s always been there at the school, it’s just a matter of getting organized and finding a group of guys that are committed to do it the whole year. I think we have that now for sure.

AG: We’re definitely going to be the underdog team when we get to California, because it’s no joke out there. Last time we went, during my heat in the quarterfinals, I needed a score of a 3 (out of 10), and I was waiting on the outside while people were scratching on the inside, yelling at each other. I was just praying for a set while everyone was on the inside fighting for every wave. You know the other East Coast teams out there, but the teams from Cali are crazy. They’re usually fully sponsored by big companies like Al Merrick Surfboards.

ET: Yeah, they offer surfing classes you can get credit for, they actually train, and the schools provide surfing coaches. But the wave they have it, Salt Creek, is a beach break. It’s nothing special.

D: Just like St. Augustine, huh?

ET: Yeah, so it’s going to be one of those contests where it’s anyone’s game, I think.

D: Do you guys have any community or surf industry sponsors?

ET: Tory from the Surf Station helped us out so much this year.

AG: He’s pretty much our main sponsor.

ET: He paid for all of our contest entries, no questions asked. We go to him and say, “Hey, we need some help for a contest,” and he’ll write us a check right there. We were really fortunate to have him help us out this year, but a lot of other businesses sponsored us, too.

MP: Yeah, Reef hooked up the sandals.

AM: Oakley gave us sunglasses.

BS: Billabong and Rip Curl also gave us wetsuits.

AG: Everyone just got in touch with people they knew in the industry and said, “Hey, we’re a really good team, we’ve got no one behind us, can you help us out?” And a lot of people did.

D: Are you guys funding this year’s trip to Nationals yourselves?

ET: That’s what we’re trying to figure out right now, whether we should do fundraisers around town, or approach businesses. Somebody also told us to get in touch with alumni who did the team in the past.

D: Yeah, there were a few successful teams back in the ‘80s, right?

MP: Yeah, that was Rick Zappone’s era. He’s the guy who hooked us up with all the Reef stuff, since he’s a rep for them now.

AG: When my dad was talking to some people at the school, they said that there was a team in the ‘90s that had a big showing, but they would raise money at keg parties, by selling cups off the keg. So that’s how Flagler College got a bad image of the Surf Team, and they’ve never come out of it. They still think we’re like that, even though we aren’t.

D: Anybody on the team in charge, or the captain?

ET: We have a Surf Club at the school, and they go hand-in-hand with the team. The kid who was involved this year is graduating, so we just voted in the new guys. Brian Ruxton is kind of like our Team Manager; he organizes all our funds and makes sure our entries are in. He and Dan Green are going to be the president/ vice president next year.

D: How do you guys all like going to Flagler and the surfing scene here in St. Augustine? And how does the team play into that?

BS: It’s good. You’re getting an education at the same time you’re surfing. I picked the school strictly on location. I live like a two-minute drive from school, and a two-minute drive from the beach. Can’t ask for much more.

AM: I think the school’s sick, and I love having a team where we all kill it. Everybody’s cool with each other, we all go out and surf and it’s just like a normal day.

MP: I’m about to graduate, so I’ve been here four years, and I think the school has improved. We’ve got a lot of new stuff, and the team’s evolved into something good. The first two years were very fickle and thin, but finally we’ve got a solid team with enough committed guys to do something.

AG: The feeling of wanting to get away from school is still here, but the team brings you back to school, and makes you want to go back when you don’t have class. We go to the meetings, see what everyone’s doing, and then go surf.

D: What’s the best day you guys have had surfing here in St. Augustine?

AM: Freshman year at Vilano [everyone laughs].

AG: When Vilano was the real Vilano. The previous semester we had a good season there too, right when school started.

BS: The Pier was good, too. And the dredge.

AM: High tide at Vilano, low tide back at the Pier. Back and forth, back and forth.

BS: Also, that day sophomore year when you [points at Andrew] were riding the T & C.

AG: Yeah! That was right at the end of the dredge…

MP: Yeah, that huge day.

AM: 10/05/05. That’s when it was. [everyone laughs]

D: You’ve got the day marked?

AM: Yep, we were coming back from Jacksonville.

AG: The pier was probably double overhead on the sets…

MP: And the wind switched…

BS: It was like a poster out there! Some guys got postcards and shirts made of it.

AM: 10/05/05. That was the session.

D: Are you guys hoping to get recognized as a competitive team by the school?

ET: That’s one of the things at Flagler. It seems like nobody really cares about the sports. Basketball and baseball get all the money —

MP: But we’ve got the best record!

BS: Yeah, we have the best team at school and we get nothing.

ET: And the school sinks so much money into that. I guess it gives them money in return from people going to the games.

D: But they spent a lot upgrading to NCAA a couple years ago.

ET: I was talking to Mitch Varnes, the organizer of the Sebastian Inlet Pro (a 5-star World Qualifying Series contest), and he’s a real advocate of collegiate surfing. He’s trying to do a contest outside the NSSA for us, and have it around the same time as the Sebastian Inlet Pro. He also wants to get surfing sanctioned as a sport by the NCAA, so then schools could offer scholarships for it. And you could go out and recruit.

MP: That would be better for the industry overall, instead of giving all these groms huge paychecks.

ET: Yeah, the industry’s full of old, washed-up pros…

MP: …because they were told they could do it for so long, and then once it was over they didn’t have a backup plan.

D: Eric, was it a hard decision for you to go to college? You were a successful pro surfer, winning contests, traveling the world.

ET: It got to the point where I was traveling so much, like 9 months a year, and I got really burnt out on the repetitiveness of the WQS. So I made the decision; it was now or never, I figured I was getting older, and I knew [pro surfing] wasn’t going to last very much longer.

D: When you started at Flagler, did you know you wanted to do the surf team, or did these guys approach you?

ET: The first year I came, I knew they had the Surf Team, but it wasn’t very organized, And then the beginning of this year, we got together and committed to getting a legit team going, because we knew we had a really good chance to go far with the caliber of surfing we have at the school. It was kind of an easy decision.

D: Andrew, you were involved with starting the surf club back up. Is it something you’d like to see remain as an option for future students?

AG: I hope people keep doing the NSSA contests. Every year, they’ll have to call Janice [Aragon] and [Linda] Johnston to make sure they still have a membership.

ET: At Easterns this year, I had a couple dads come up to me and ask me about Flagler. They told me their kids are sophomores or juniors in high school, and they’re trying to get them to go to school. It’s hard to convince a kid who wants to make it surfing to go to college. But that’s one of the things about Flagler, is you’re able to continue surfing and continue competing while still going to school. And I think that would be huge incentive for a lot of these kids, because they graduate high school and there’s this decision: “Do I try and make it on the ‘QS for a couple years? Or do I go to school?” And if they get scholarships, and there’s actually a full team, there’d be a lot bigger influence —

AG: There’d be a lot more kids from everywhere really trying to go to college.

MP: A lot of kids don’t want to do it after they graduate high school, because there’s no coverage at all.

ET: Right, they feel like they’re going to go to school and just drop of the face of the earth, at least to the surfing industry.

D: So that could be one of the positives of the Surf Team in the college’s eyes?

AG: I would say 60-70 % of the guys come here because of the surf.

BS: And the beach scene.

MP: Yeah, girls, guys…

AM: They need to market it.

ET: One of the biggest things we’re going to have to overcome is the faculty has this negative, Spicoli-type image of surfers. And we just need to break that mold and make them see we’re a good group of guys that are really committed to the cause.