The students in Cal State Long Beach’s surfing class have varying surfing experience levels and backgrounds. Although many are California natives, others come from halfway around the world.
Surfing has been offered as a course through the kinesiology department at CSULB for about 32 years, according to Robert Lee Willmore, who teaches the three sections offered this semester. The original creator of the class, Tom Gibbons, still teaches and will be instructing a course in the fall.
Willmore said he has been surfing since 1958. He began at the age of 14 when his brother joined the military and left behind a surfboard in the garage. He learned to surf in Seal Beach, at the same spot where he sometimes takes his students.
About two-thirds of the students are beginners, and one-third start the course with more advanced skills, Willmore said. The beginners are given more instruction while the experienced students are given more freedom.
Willmore said he fears that, in light of budget cuts, surfing courses could disappear.
“It is a part of school I’d hate to see lost,” he said.
He said he believes surfing can play an important role in the lives of students on the threshold of adulthood. It allows them to experience a “play condition.”
“[Surfing] gives people a chance to go back to being children,” he said.
According to Willmore, a number of international students take the course. Currently students from Germany, Finland and Sweden are enrolled in the course.
Surfing can be a particular challenge for students who come from areas with little or no access to the ocean, versus beginning surfers who have, at the very least, spent time swimming in it before.
Aram Ghanaat, a student from Germany studying international business, is experiencing surfing for the first time.
“Coming from Germany to California, I saw it as a must-do,” Ghanaat said.
He said that there is the idea in Germany that everyone in California, especially Southern California, hits the waves.
“I couldn’t go back to Germany [and tell] my friends I hadn’t surfed in California,” he said.
Despite the difficulty of surfing, the coldness of the water at times and even recently receiving a concussion due to a surfboard to the head, Ghanaat has really enjoyed the class. His friends back home are jealous that he is able to surf for academic credit.
Ghanaat also appreciates Willmore’s philosophy of surfing being about both the sport and a way to bring people together.
Many of the other students in the class are California natives with varying backgrounds in surfing.
Earl Miguel, a senior graphic design major and California resident, was a self-described “beginner-beginner” when he signed up for the course.
Although he did not become as good at the sport as he would have liked, the consistency of having to surf every week definitely led to improvement, he said.
Kristen Takagi, a senior biochemistry major, is from San Diego. Her reason for taking the class was simple: she already loved surfing.
“I wanted to get better at surfing, I just love the sport,” she said.