Kassia Meador : photo ASPWorldtour/Karen

Out to make competitive waves

Oceanside's Meador puts her side interests aside

Surfersvillage Global Surf News, 11 May, 2005 : - - She's dabbled with fashion modeling, hosting TV shows and producing all-female surfing videos. But now 22-year-old Kassia Meador has put her sidelines on the sideline. For the first time in her professional surfing career, she's focusing on making her mark as an athlete.

"I'm committed to doing the contests and giving it my all," she said. Her goal: rack up a string of contest victories, including the women's longboard world championship. Such ambitions explain in part why she recently moved from her parents' home in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles to Oceanside.

"Down here, there's more variety of surf spots, more variations of waves," she said. "It helps your surfing improve when you can surf all kinds of waves on all kinds of boards." She likes Oceanside's ethnic diversity and the small-town coziness of living in a funky beach town where Coast Highway 101 hasn't been renamed or overwhelmed by suburban strip malls. Plus, she's closer to the beach and her favorite longboard shaper, local legend Donald Takayama. "I can check every surf spot from Oceanside to Cardiff in a half-hour," she noted.

After learning to surf at age 14, Meador wormed her way into the talented lineup at Malibu's world-class point break. At the Bu, she watched and learned from the post-modern, old-school longboard masters: Joel Tudor, Jimmy Gamboa and Josh Farberow. But it was one of her peers, up-and-coming longboarder Dane Peterson, who stoked her competitive fires.

"Dane and I were always trying to one-up each other in the water," she said, noting that she was treated like "one of the boys." "People say noseriding is one of my strengths. That's mostly a result of growing up at Malibu watching the masters do it." She won the first surfing contest she ever entered, a local competition sponsored by the Leo Carillo Junior Lifeguards. Her skills developed rapidly.

She graduated from Agoura High with honors but acknowledges she was mostly surfing and traveling during her senior year. Her father, a lifelong surfer and member of the Ventura Surf Club, nurtured her interest in the sport.

In 2002 she was voted by Surfer magazine as the "Number 9 Female Grommet" and was featured in Seventeen magazine and Sports Illustrated for Women. Major action-sports companies took notice and signed Meador to endorsement contracts. She was soon surfing in contests in Fiji, Costa Rica and Australia.

"I don't really understand how it all happened," she said, referring to her bottle-rocket rise as a women's surfing star and action-sports personality. "I got lucky, I think, and I was in the right place at the right time."

Success has allowed her to pursue her passion for photography, still and video. Meador and business partner Prue Jeffries, a top-ranked Australian short boarder, recently completed a 27-minute all-women surfing video titled "Fashion." (It's available for purchase at: www.stardustfactory.com or at local surf shops.)

The video is pretty basic: girls and women surfing good waves set to an energetic, thumping soundtrack with animation spliced in. No plot. No story line. "It was all about getting (females) amped to go surfing," she said. "Fashion" cost about $25,000 to make, including the cost to buy cameras, underwater housings, travel, etc.

The video was originally shown in Huntington Beach, but a second premiere in San Diego County is planned this summer at the La Paloma Theater in Encinitas.

Meador is already filming a second surf video that puts a spotlight on women's longboarding. This one, she promised, will have a more cohesive theme and attempt to capture the ballet-like artistry of women's longboarding. "Women's longboarding is so visual," she said. "It has a more seductive beauty and artsy look to it."

Meador has recently finished a correspondence course in photography but can't say where that might lead her. Who knows? With her smoky baritone voice and approachable personality, she could end up on the radio, in movies or commercials. "I've never been one for conventional anything," she said.

More USA/Cen Amer. surfing news available here
Check the latest West Coast Surf Reports and Forcasts

Source Singon Sandiego / Terry Rodgers

Profile - Surfersvillage