SURFER Interviews Rochelle Ballard after Her Retirement

Rochelle Ballard, Claire Bevilacqua and Keala Kennelly check out the early morning conditions at Honolua Bay.

Leaving the Tour, do you think you might feel like you missed out competing with this new generation of girls?

The thing is that I’ve grown up with them. I’ve done my camps with the top girls in Hawaii for the last 6 years. I surf with Coco at home all the time – when I travel I go on trips with Steph and with those girls and I don’t feel like I’m missing out at all because I’m so inspired by them and they’re pushing my surfing and I think that I’m such a child at heart that I really love just hanging out with those girls. They’re all really mature for their age, and surfing is such a youthful sport and so versatile that I don’t thing that age is of consequence its more your state of mind and where you’re surfing level is at. I know that I'll enjoy years to come of surfing with those girls and watching them blow up and surfing contests. It’s exciting to see.

Name one thing you’d like to change about women’s surfing today?

I think the thing I’d like to change most is the consistency of surf locations. We started to change the format a few years ago to put girls in waves of consequence and waves that are inspiring, and I think it really started to push the level. Somehow, I think we’ve lost that. It’s back to beach breaks again and places that are a bit ho hum. It’s all high performance but it starts to become monotonous after a while. I think it’s really important to be surfing waves that are barreling on the tour.

It’s the ultimate thing in surfing. It’s the best thing that happens to you as a surfer and it’s what makes you freak out the most. And other people freak out there s nothing better than paddling out and seeing one of your friends getting a crazy shack and getting spat out and I think that element is missing right now. It’s great we have sunset back and Honolua, but there’s something about surf destinations in tropical locations you don’t feel like as a professional surfer you’re missing out on all the free surfing trips when you’re traveling with a jersey.

Any chance you’ll be doing some wildcards next year?

Yeah for sure, I’m going to be in the X Games coming up. and I’d definitely love to stick around during the triple crown and anything events that might come up in the future – back in the day we used to see the OP Pro that SURFER Magazine was hosting in Indo and that was the most amazing event I’ve ever experienced. That rejuvenated me in so many ways as well as many other surfers I’m sure. It really pushed that level and made us open up to different formats in surfing. We’ve kind of drifted away from that – and I’m not really sure why, but it would be good to see some more specialty events.

What’ s amazing to me is a lot of these young girls already know how to grab their rail and get barreled and know how to take a line and drive in the barrel and we don’t get to see that. And we’re missing out. It’s something we created a few years ago when Keala and I were pulling in to shacks and people were like, “You can’t do that!” And we were like, “Yes, we can!” All these girls came up that were inspired and they started doing it and somehow we drifted away from that…so it would be nice to see it again.

Anything else?

Just peace love and rock n’ roll. Ha.