Surfing at Huntington Beach : Sophomore Makes Grade as Amateur : Post Almost Didn’t Take Up the Sport

When Nea Post tells you how she almost didn’t take up surfing, she conjures up images of careers that should have been. You think of a graceful 7-footer who makes a living changing light bulbs and has never touched a basketball. A longshoreman with arms like hams who has never pushed against a blocking sled.

It’s all the more bewildering after you’ve seen her completely control a wave for which one judge gave her a high score of 9.5 on a scale of 10, helping her to win heat four Wednesday at the sixth annual Op Pro Surfing Championship at Huntington Beach.

And even more intriguing when you consider that she’s only an amateur. And only 15 years old.

“My first year I didn’t surf much because my parents thought it would hurt my grades, that whole surfing stereotype,” said Post, who will be a sophomore next fall at Huntington Beach High School and takes a surf class instead of a regular physical education class. “But I kept up my 4.0 and now they’re really into it. They always go to my contests, always tell their friends.”

There’s even more to tell now. Surfing against professionals in round one of the women’s trials, Post scored well on her first and last rides to win her heat. Among those surfers she outpointed was San Clemente’s Jolene Smith, 21, a professional ranked 10th on the Assn. of Surfing Professionals tour the last two years. As the top two finishers in the heat, both advance to today’s second round of the trials.

Meanwhile in head-to-head men’s trials, Newport Beach’s Richie Collins upset 11th-ranked Mike Parsons to advance to the main draw, which begins today.

Although Post has passed only the first step in this tournament, she has accomplished much in her three-year career. She is the women’s surfing high school champion in the Sunset League. She won the California championship of the National Scholastic Surfing Assn. And only last Thursday she returned from a month on the road, surfing at Bali and in the Pacific Cup at Australia’s Gold Coast in amateur events, where she placed fourth.

“She just has an uncanny ability to judge waves,” said Chuck Allen, her coach at Huntington Beach. “She was able to move inside, just surf to perfection for what the heat was.”

Post hopes she can do that all the time.

“The pros are more consistent,” she said. “I have my on days and my off days. I hope to become more consistent.”

Her schedule should help her. Post surfs some four hours a day during the school year. In the summer, she stretches that to five hours. For that reason, she has abandoned the cross-country team because its afternoon practices would cut too much into her surfing schedule. She has never had any problem concentrating on surfing since, as a sixth-grader, she tagged along with her brothers to the beach.

“Once the water got cold they quit,” she said. “And I kept surfing.”

Surfing Notes Duplications never bothered sisters Jorja and Jolene Smith of San Clemente, who are identical twins sharing the same sport, same techniques and same hotel room. If anything, they want to be even closer in the world rankings. Jorja won’t surf until Friday because she finished in the top eight last year and therefore automatically advances to round one. Jolene, though, has finished 10th, so she still has to fight through the trials. She had an impressive ride on her last wave to place second in her heat and advance into round two trials. “Watching the trials is a pretty good incentive to stay in the top eight,” said Jorja, who finished fourth in rankings last year. “The quality of surfing is so good now that it’s kind of scary if something happened and knocked me back there.” . . . Tom Curren, the world champion and American who snatched surfing back from Australian dominance, will be making his first appearance in the tournament as he faces John Parmenter of Huntington Beach today . . . The women’s second-round competition, after the men’s competition, will start in the early afternoon.