Surfing
Surfing
Get to know: Katie McConnell
The 2022 Red Bull Magnitude rookie of the year is living her best life.
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Get to know the women competing in Red Bull Magnitude. In this five-story series, we will introduce a few of the hard-charging women who chase big waves around the world. This time, we shine the spotlight on Katie McConnell, Red Bull Magnitude’s 2022 Rookie of the Year.
Katie McConnell surfs during Red Bull Magnitude 2023 at Waimea Bay, Oahu
© Christa Funk / Red Bull Content Pool
Growing up in Encinitas, California, McConnell loved surf magazines. As she flipped through the pages, she would always stop and gaze at the photos of surfers tucked deep inside the barrel. Mesmerized by the blue water surrounding them, she wondered what it would be like to glide straight through the ocean’s heart. It took McConnell until high school to learn to surf. Once she did, the ocean became her life’s obsession and it has taken her from deep under the Antarctic ice to the top of Waimea Bay’s giant peaks.
This winter, McConnell is one of the hard-charging surfers competing in Red Bull Magnitude. In 2022 she won Red Bull Magnitude’s Rookie of the Year award, and this winter she’s determined to improve on that success. A first ride on a borrowed board set McConnell on an unexpected path. She never imagined she’d travel the world in search of big waves. “It’s like a great adventure,” she says. “It kind of just changed my life — and I feel like I’m living my best life now.”
Katie McConnell at the awards ceremony for Red Bull Magnitude in April 2022
© Heather Hart / Red Bull Content Pool
First Waves
When McConnell turned 15, she signed up for surfing as a P.E. course at San Dieguito High. She did not yet know how to surf. Though she had grown up going to the beach, she had stopped when she reached her teens. “I didn’t feel comfortable in my body at the beach,” she says. “I had really low self-confidence and I always compared myself to the other girls.” Fascinated by the photos of waves she saw in the magazines, McConnell saw surfing as a way to transform herself.
Every day, her parents dropped her off at Cardiff reef before school, and every day, she tried to ride the waves she found there on her Costco shortboard. “I was just getting demolished every single day for weeks,” she says. “They did a swim test on the first day, and then they released us out into the wild to surf.” At last the teacher handed her a longboard. He told her it was a magic board. It turned out that he was right, and when McConnell paddled out, she caught her first wave. “I’ll never forget that first wave when I felt how awesome surfing was, and how it felt to glide across the wave,” she says.
That was it. McConnell was hooked. Almost immediately, surfing changed how she perceived herself. “Even if I wasn’t catching waves, I’d get in the water, and I’d feel so good,” she says. “I started feeling fit, I had more energy, and I felt happy.” Surfing gave her a new outlet and improved her self-confidence. It also increased her curiosity about the ocean.
Katie McConnell at Red Bull Magnitude 2022 at Outer Reef, Oahu
© Sarah Lee / Red Bull Content Pool
Life Under the Waves
After she graduated high school, McConnell chose to study marine science. It opened another new world to her. While at UC Santa Cruz, McConnell learned how to do underwater research. She collected samples, took photos, and surveyed marine life populations — all underwater. “I just love being underwater,” she says. “It’s a whole other place.” By the time she finished her degree in 2012, McConnell had also completed a diving certification from the American Academy of Underwater Scientists.
For the next five years, McConnell worked as a diver in support of scientific studies around the world. She dove under the ice in Antarctica, explored the Patagonian fjords in Chile, and swam through California’s kelp forests. Long-term monitoring projects became her speciality. “I used to count and survey all the different plants, animals, and invertebrates on reefs all over the world,” she says. “It was so cool!”
In 2017, McConnell began graduate work at Oregon State University in the microbiology department. Her studies took her to the island of Mo’orea in Tahiti, where she worked on a project monitoring the coral biome. She was especially interested in how changes on land and in human behavior affected the marine life on the reefs. McConnell’s move to Oregon also opened the way to something entirely new to her. That’s where McConnell began big-wave surfing.
A Great Adventure
Katie McConnell surfs at Redbull Magnitude 2023 at Waimea Bay, Oahu, Hawaii
© John Hook / Red Bull Content Pool
With its cold water, sizable surf, and large shark population, Oregon is not the easiest place to surf. Adapting to her new environment, McConnell began surfing bigger swells. In March 2019 she paddled out on a 9’2” Linden, borrowed from her boyfriend. That day, she saw the biggest waves of her life and got cleaned up by a massive set. The following day, she went back for more. “I caught a couple of waves that were the biggest waves I’d ever caught, and I was just so stoked,” she says.
After that day, she wanted a board of her own. McConnell called up Gary Linden, a long-time shaper in Oceanside, California, who still makes her boards. “I think if it weren’t for Gary Linden shaping me this gateway board, I wouldn’t be here,” she says. She picked up the board in summer 2019 and spent the next few months paddling the Willamette River to prepare for the winter season. A 10’0” board has a quad fin set-up and a quadruple stringer for strength. It combines the colors of California poppies and red wine. “That thing is a beast,” she says. “I’ve gotten some of my best waves on it and it’s still going strong.”
When a swell appeared on the forecasts in December 2019, McConnell headed to a big-wave spot in Oregon. “I paddled into my first big wave after seven hours in the water,” she says. In the lineup, she met Eric Akiskalian and he offered to tow her into a few. Big-wave surfing had captured her imagination. McConnell set aside plans to study kelp forests at Universidad Autónoma de Baja California in Ensenada, and chose surfing. “I finally gave myself permission to just surf,” she says.
Katie McConnell surfs at Red Bull Magnitude on the North Shore in 2022
© Ha'a Keaulana
Initially, McConnell planned to devote a year to surfing full time. Then came Red Bull Magnitude. Last winter she paddled into her first wave at Waimea Bay and experienced the power of Pe’ahi. In her clips, she looks poised and steady, as though she were not a newcomer at all. By season’s end, McConnell had won the Rookie of the Year award in the biggest moment of her fledgling big-wave career. “Ever since Magnitude, it opened more doors for me,” she says. “I’m just trying to stay humble.”
The shift from anonymous charger to award-winning big-wave surfer has come with almost overwhelming speed for McConnell. Her friends in Oregon didn’t post on social media and they rarely talked to the outside world about the waves they surfed. “For a long time, I lived in an underground community,” she says. Sometimes, McConnell struggles to hold her balance. “Whenever I get boggled and start overthinking everything, I just go surfing.” The ocean has a way of putting it all in perspective.
Giving Back
Katie McConnell at the awards ceremony for Red Bull Magnitude 2022
© Tahnei Roy / Red Bull Content Pool
This winter McConnell returned to Hawaii with the goal of improving on last year’s break-out performance. “I had such a good experience with Magnitude, I really wanted to try again,” she says. “I wanted to see if I could surf a bigger wave and draw better lines — and just improve my skills.” McConnell found a place to stay on the North Shore and a flowered bike with a chain painted in Rasta colors to ride to the beach. Between swells, she teaches surf lessons the Jamie O’Brien Surf Experience and writes grants for YachtAid Global, a nonprofit.
Unfortunately, McConnell did not have the easiest start to the season. In December she paddled out at Pe’ahi for the first swell of the year. On her second wave, she injured her MCL. She’s taken it in stride. “I had to slow down a bit,” she says. In January, she traveled to Todos Santos for the first big west coast swell of the new year. “It was massive,” she says. “It was literally massive!” She paddled out her well-traveled 10’0” Linden, and says she’s pretty sure it saved her life out there.
Katie McConnell surfs at Red Bull Magnitude at Waimea Bay in January 2023
© Christa Funk / Red Bull Content Pool
Less than a week later, McConnell returned to Hawaii for the first Red Bull Magnitude session at Waimea Bay on January 11. Strapping her Linden to her racks, she rode her bike down to the Bay. It was only McConnell’s third time surfing the famous wave. “You go for these really vert drops,” she says. “It seems like the wave loves to either slab out from under you or throw upward and outward, so you get these really fun, challenging steep drops.”
As she spends more time surfing big waves, McConnell is trying to walk the razor’s edge between pushing her limits and staying safe. Her goal for the first Waimea session of the year was to avoid injury and add to her experience. “I didn’t catch the biggest wave of the day. I was never the deepest,” she says. “But I caught some good drops, my knee was fine, and no wipeouts!” McConnell still feels like she’s getting to know the waves in Hawaii and finding out who she is.
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Katie McConnell
1/11/2023
While she is proud of her progression in big surf, McConnell finds the most joy in the moments when she can give back. One day recently, a woman from Saudi Arabia came to take a surf lesson. All she wanted was to ride a wave before her thirtieth birthday. By the end of the lesson, she stood tall and confident on her board, her dream realized. However far McConnell travels and however many waves she rides, she still remembers the uncertain teen girl she used to be and the way surfing transformed her life forever.
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