Surfing
Surfing
From Blue Crush to Pipeline is for the girls era: Access breeds progression
In 2002, Blue Crush spotlighted women at Pipeline. Two decades later, access - not ability - sparked a surge. How did a new generation rise to charge the world’s most infamous wave?
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Blue Crush is a household, pop-culture name, and the extent of surf knowledge for most who don’t follow the sport. The 2002 Blockbuster film is a story about a young woman who overcomes her fears to compete in and win a women’s surf event at the world’s most dangerous wave, Pipeline. So to the common public, women have been surfing in professional contests at Pipeline for decades, but that was far from the case up until 2022, for reasons uncovered below.
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Watch Blue Crush, directed by Bill Ballard:
58 min
Blue Crush
In a landmark film, Blue Crush charts the rise of women’s surfing in the late 1990s.
02
The breakthrough: WSL Women at Pipeline (2022–2024)
Moana Jones Wong led the charge in the first ever WSL Championship Tour event at Pipeline in 2022, with a dominating performance, proving she’d put more time in the tube at the crowded wave than any woman in history. On any given day when Pipeline is “good” there’s at least 60 hungry surfers scrounging for every rideable wave. Getting even one decent wave in a session is near impossible, so the women’s field has utilized their time in competition to learn the wave without having to play ‘Battlefield’ with the crowd. By the third year of the Women’s Division in the 2024 WSL Lexus Pipeline Pro, the entire women’s field visibly made a giant leap forward, proving access breeds progression.
Moana Jones
© Jake Marote/Red Bull Content Pool
Caitlin Simmers's "first proper Pipe wave", timed perfectly on finals day
© Brent Bielmann/World Surf League
With the women’s heats back to back with the men’s, it became evident that the women were not only capable of surfing Pipeline, they thrived doing so, leading the 2024 Women’s champion Caitlin Simmers to remind everyone what they'd just witnessed in her interview following her win saying, “Pipeline is for the f***** girls!” .
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The pioneers who took on pipeline
25 years prior, there were not even a handful of women surfing Pipeline. In fact, there were only two women regularly daring the crowd: goofy-footed Keala Kennelly and regular-footed Rochelle Ballard. Why? It’s dangerous and scary undoubtedly, but it was also as unwelcoming of a lineup to women, or any newcomer, as any in the world. For those unfamiliar with the break at Pipeline, there's actually two waves that share the same lineup- the iconic, unpredictable left known as Pipeline, and the fast, frighteningly-shallow right called Backdoor.
Rochelle Ballard surfs at Red Bull Magnitude 2023 at Waimea Bay, Oahu, HI
© Christa Funk / Red Bull Content Pool
Rochelle Ballard put surfing Pipeline in the late 90’s into perspective, “I wasn't looking at the left because it was just scary and hard. Everybody wanted to go left, so I got what I could at Backdoor. Going backside at Pipeline was daunting to read the wave and be able to get under the lip. I’m small and didn’t have that muscle mass and power to ride a big board or to paddle in deep. I'd be paddling and guys would just go right past me and I'd be like, ‘f***! , can somebody push me in!!!’”
In the late 90’s, a handful of women were finally making a living off of professional surfing from sponsorships (equal prize purses were still 25 years to come). Rochelle Ballard knew that her talented peers and top competition Lisa Anderson, Layne Beachley, Keala Kennelly, Megan Abubo, Serena Brooke, and a few others had something special surfing had never seen before. Rather than investing her sponsorship money to make a film about herself, she bought a camera and employed her then-husband to film her and her world-class peers on various surf trips. According to Ballard, there was no sense in standing on the top of the mountain by herself.
Blue Crush cast: Brooke, Abubo, Jeffries, Beachley, Kennelly, and Ballard
© Tom Servais
Iconic turn by Rochelle Ballard who spent 17 years on the World Tour
© Tom Servais
Layne Beachley cutback
© [unknown]
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From film to fight: Building structural change
The Hollywood film wasn’t the first Blue Crush, its name was derived and licensed from the OG Blue Crush, a first-of-its-kind generational women’s surf film from 1998 directed by Bill Ballard and made possible by his then-wife Rochelle Ballard.
Blue Crush director and cinematographer Bill Ballard in the Mentawais
© Tom Servais
The all-women’s surf flick Blue Crush debuted as a VHS and inspired the next generation of women, as films so effectively do, but distribution wasn’t nearly as accessible as it is now. Still, it proved that representation matters. Bill Ballard, under his company Billygoat Productions, would continue making more surf films with this expanding generation, titled Peaches , Poetic Silence, and Modus Mix.
A few years after the OG Blue Crush released, Ballard and her peers had become worldwide sensations and sparked the interest of the mainstream world.
Brian Grazer and John Stockwell, the producer and director of the eventual Hollywood version of Blue Crush, visited the North Shore at the turn of the century to develop a story they were interested in about female surfing, leading them to the only female Pipeline regulars Rochelle Ballard and Keala Kennelly.
While fictitious, there were elements of the Blue Crush narrative heavily inspired by Ballard and Kennelly, and their dream to compete at the most famous wave in the world. Ballard was the lead stunt double for the film, while Kennelly played herself as the main competitive rival, with Kate Skarratt Wilcomes as the only other ‘stunt’ surf woman that wanted to throw herself over the ledge to get the shot.
OG Rochelle Ballard with next-gen of women's surfing, Erin Brooks
© Eleven17 Creative / Red Bull Content Pool
Keala Kennelly surfs during Red Bull Magnitude
© Christa Funk / Red Bull Content Pool
FIlming Blue Crush was the first time any of these women got to ‘pick’ the wave they wanted to go for at Pipe. Ballard taught herself how to make the backhand barrel drop while filming. Reminiscing, she remarked “Blue Crush made me do it. I told myself, ‘I gotta go left’. I mean really that's what women need, I needed to be pushed. I didn't want to go left, I wanted to go just Backdoor because I was scared of hitting my head and getting hurt, but I had to go for it.”
Going for it paid off. Blue Crush became a massive hit, introducing many people to surfing and the notion that women charge Pipeline. Ballard and Kennelly continued to increase their barrel skills in treacherous waves around the world, but with the global recession in 2008, surf brands took a hard hit and support for women’s events shrank, along with the belief by contest organizers that women should compete at Pipeline.
Throughout the late 2000’s and early 2010’s, one of Pipeline’s only female surfers from the 70’s, Betty Depolito, continued her service to women’s surfing by organizing the Women’s Pipeline Pro. The semi-pro event was usually held in March, shoulder season for Pipeline, and rarely saw the break even close to its potential, but at least it gave the competitors a chance to be in the lineup alone and start to learn the reef.
In 2018, Kennelly was part of a group of female big-wave surfers who provoked the historic shift in the World Surf League to offer equal prize money to the women’s field, becoming the first major league sport to do so. The real crux of opportunity came in 2020 when Kennelly, Depolito, and others petitioned the Oahu City Council to pass Ordinance 20–42 requiring any surf event on the North Shore to ensure gender equality. Once major events resumed after Covid, the women finally had a major pro event at Pipeline right alongside the men, as Ballard and Kennelly had dreamed of two decades prior.
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The next generation of women's surfing
Molly Picklum with her WSL Champions' trophy
© World Surf League/Red Bull Content Pool
Caitlin Simmers basking in that new trophy glow
© Jimmy Wilson/Red Bull Content Pool
Erin Brooks winning the Vans Pipe Masters in wild style
© Brent Bielmann/Vans
Sierra Kerr, sitting pretty on a Fijian foamball
© Matt Dunbar/World Surf League
By the third year of the WSL Lexus Pipeline Pro in 2024, the access to the wave proved the vast rise in ability. Molly Picklumscored the first perfect 10 going left at Pipeline, overcoming the daunting backside drop as Ballard had while filming Blue Crush. Carissa Moore and Caity Simmers weaved through timeless Backdoor tubes to victories in 2023 and 2024 respectively. Erin Brooks claimed the 2024 Vans Pipe Masters title by packing a giant Pipeline barrel, while Sierra Kerr threaded one of the longest backdoor barrels ever seen in competition in the same event the year prior. Moana Jones Wong rode the best barrel ever ridden by a woman at Pipeline seconds after the buzzer at the ‘24 Backdoor Shootout.
All this to say, this generation of female surfers is breaking barriers given the opportunities their predecessors made possible. Natural talent, untamable courage, and access equals the gap in capabilities between the men and women in heavy surf disappearing one wave at a time. Look out for the advances the Super Six and the rest of their generation make in heavy waves in the years to come.
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