The WSMS Surf Art Camp Origin Story

This story starts when I was attending Flagler College for a degree in Business and minor studies of Psychology, Marketing, and Advertisement.. Well really it goes way back to when my dad first put me on the nose of his surfboard when I was 3, but to save time we’ll skip ahead.

Many of you might not know this, but I was born and raised in the surf industry. My dad was a sales representative for Reef Flip Flops for most of my life, though he worked for a few other big names such as Hurley, Rusty, and Quiksilver.

One of my first chores as a kid was sorting through the 100+ pairs of flops in our garage for surf expo every year. The family joke is that flip flops put my sister and I through college…because they did.

This is important to our story because whether I wanted to admit it at certain parts of my life or not, surfing was in my blood.

Skipping forward to when I decided to go to college instead of continue my push for being a professional surfer.

Yes, I did in fact want to go pro as a surfer. I had sponsors, a highly competitive surf coach, and a rat pack of competitive surfers (one who is now a women’s world champ, Caroline Marks) and the EXTREME desire to surf at an elite level.

That is until I realized what that really entailed.. constantly traveling following the contest circuit fighting for wins in less than par surf conditions, all the while having to dress and act how your sponsors expected. NO THANKS!

So I choose college and lifeguarding instead.

What first felt like I was giving up on my professional surf career actually ended up being the best decision for it!

By now, it’s my sophomore year at Flagler, and the thought of a future career and life was starting to weigh on me heavily.

One unique summer day while working marine rescue for St. John’s County, I had a deep realization.

This realization was that I had accumulated a ton of experience throughout my unique life that was very valuable for the right person.

Unfortunately, it took a really close call with an elderly couple on the Northside of the pier where I made one of my most extreme rescues at that time, and for the first time in my life had no doubt in my mind that I just saved another persons life.

While catching my breath on the beach watching the husband and wife embrace each other and sob, I realized my ocean experience could not only save lives in the heat of the moment, but also change lives forever.

Later that day the woman brought me a gift and a hug. She told me her grandkids will still get to grow up with a grandmother because of me. This deeply touching statement confirmed my epiphany of the life changing ripple effect my knowledge could cause.

At that moment I knew I was going to be a lifeguard for life. I promised myself that I was going to use my experience to protect and serve our community for the rest of my life.

Although it may seem like I didn’t keep that promise because I no longer work for SJCMR, I will explain how I have kept this promise.

The same summer I rescued that poor elderly couple from drowning, I volunteered to help run the Junior Guard program that the St. Johns County Marine Rescue hosts every summer.

This camp teaches kids lifesaving skills in the ocean. Not only how to protect and prevent danger for themselves but also their family and friends. How cool is that?

Spending time teaching kids the basics of CPR, the difference between rescuing a conscious vs. unconscious victim, rescue board techniques, how to identify and navigate rip currents, and how to use the oceans power to your advantage changed the trajectory of my life.

During the third week of Junior guards I thought that if I was ALSO teaching these kids how to surf, AKA my biggest passion in life, than this would be the best job in the world.

This is where my surf camp career began. Yes I had given many surf lessons to college friends and other competitive groms wanting to win more contests, but in my mind this is where it all started.

That first summer I fell so in love with surf camp, that I became slightly obsessed. I worked as many days as I could get off from lifeguarding, constantly tried to convince the camp director to meet with me after camp days to explain what he was doing, took on as many private lessons as possible, and never missed an opportunity to learn the structure of the business.

Not going to lie, It was slightly heartbreaking to realize I had no idea how to manage a group of 20+ kids and didn’t have any experience in teaching first time surfers how to catch, stand up, and ride waves. I thought of myself as a high level surfer who was great with kids, how could it be that I was a terrible surf instructor and teacher?

How could I tell I wasn’t great? Not only did the kids make sure to tell me…

But I was also constantly seeking help from the Camp Director, Angela, for dispute resolution and behavioral management.. It was clear I was NOT in control.

Although humbling to say least this was the WALL I hit that created a FIRE inside of me. For the next year leading up to camp my life was consumed with learning how to manage and teach kids how to surf.

I spent all my extra hours in the library diving into the fundamentals that I built my surfing off of. I interviewed my old coach, dad, and other high level surfers in my network as well as my closest professors and previous camp director on how they view teaching. I enrolled myself into Child development and Personality development Psychology courses to understand how we learn. I was going to be the BEST surf instructor at camp the following year.

I made it my purpose to formulate a bullet proof process for anyone to learn how to stand up and ride a wave on a surfboard through combining basic psychological principals and all of the foundational surf information I had.

Due to my unrelenting efforts to learn from the previous camp director on how to manage kids and run a successful and safe surf camp, I was the first person that came to mind when she decided to pass the torch for the following year. I landed an interview with the shop owner for the camp director position and accepted the job 3 months before camp started.

Summer was coming and I was in the pilots seat. I took on all of the pre-summer responsibilities with stride; customer service, booking, week emails, liability waivers, employee management, goodie bags, sponsorships, and marketing.

I was very proud of my position and planned to make safety a priority. We had multiple locations and this was going to be the biggest responsibility I had up until this point.

Camp started and ran smoothly initially. The waves were perfect size, all of our instructors were showing up, and even better the kiddos were well behaved. The techniques Angela passed on were paying off and I was successfully running a fun and safe surf camp!

Then the third week hit and EVERYTHING started to change…

What I failed to realize was that the first two weeks of camp consistent of kiddos who come to camp every year. These kids were surf camp “vets”. They knew the process, the rules, and even how to surf. So they were NOT first timers.. and week three shed light on the difference to me.

Drop off started off fine with all of the kiddos behaving and on time. I got confirmation from the other location they were about to get in the water and all was well! I was at the bigger camp of the two and was also about to get the kiddos in the water. This is when things turned south, fast.

9 of our 20 students had panic attacks upon entry into the water at my location and another 6 once they got out past the waves. Within 10 minutes we had 15 TERRIFIED students who were consumed by fear and tears wanting to stay on the beach where they were safe. It took us 30 minutes or so to get these first timers back on the beach under our tent, calmed down, and starting snack time early.

I called our other location to check in with high hopes they weren’t experiencing even slightly close to what we were.. and to my surprise it was just as chaotic if not worse at the other location!

We had to adapt that day and set up beach games in attempts to keep kiddos who were scared occupied and happy, which appeared to work at first, however their parents reached out and told us otherwise. These kids didn’t want to come back, they felt it wasn’t safe and were scared we would force them to do it again.

That night coming down from the adrenaline of what just happened, I thought maybe I wasn’t ready for this?

This day I had realized that in many kids and first time surfers there is equal parts fear to desire. Meaning, these kiddos wanted to learn to surf just as much as they were afraid to learn!

That night I didn’t sleep, instead I made a huge shift in our program. I created a model that catered towards fun engagement that built confidence in our students before they went out and surfed. I decided I needed to inform these kiddos much more about the ocean prior to entering just as we did at the Junior guard camp, and would never make surfing the only option at camp.

I pulled inspiration from my past which lead me to recall that I spent COUNTLESS hours swimming and boogie boarding on the inside before I had the courage to paddle out and surf with my dad.

So that is just what I did, made rip current lessons mandatory and created the first Free Swim group that camp had seen.

From then on we took every kid through an in-depth rip current lesson and gave all of the kids the choice to swim or boogie board instead of surfing before snack and game time.

We pushed through the rest of the summer with this new model and it proved to help bring first timers at ease and reduce the fear and panic attacks we once experienced.

Summer came to an end and I was actually thankful because I knew I needed a new model. A model that was FULLY INCLUSIVE for all kiddos, no matter their level of ocean experience.

And I didn’t wait one second to start this process.

Within a month of camp being done I had come up with what I believed to be a breakthrough in surf camp during one of my Senior level Psychology classes. It was a model that was lead by something I learned known as “Play Therapy”.

The case study I learned this approach from was using art and music to help kiddos process and talk about a traumatic experience they had been through. The study found that the kiddos who created art or played with an instrument were much more likely to recall and talk through the event without being consumed with emotion. Which lead to higher success rates in healing from the trauma.

This was it! Art and music paired with surfing. As an artist and musician myself, why didn’t I think of this before?

I couldn’t wait to bring this new breakthrough to the owner of the camp. I just knew he would be thrilled with the idea and we would never experience such extreme emotions at camp again. So I scheduled a meeting and got my new model all written down.

After pitching my 6 steps to surfing success and new play therapy model I was surprised to hear the haunting word, NO.

Even worse, it was followed by “We run a traditional surf camp and you have already changed too much, we will never do this at our camp. If you want to keep your job I suggest you stick to what we have done for almost 20 years.”

I was in shock when I left the meeting.

I won’t lie, I did briefly doubt my new breakthrough for a couple of days.

But then, thanks to Professor Hollanchock at Flagler, I realized I just needed to do it on my own. Why give this breakthrough to another business owner? This model was my creation. I was then actually glad he turned me down..

The next meeting I scheduled was to announce that I was resigning from the Directors position and was going to start my own camp.

I sat face to face with the shop owner and explained my gratitude towards him and his surf school as it led me the direction I was destined to go, and to my surprise this meeting went WAY better than the last. Although upset to hear I was going to be competition, he acknowledged the respect I was showing by being honest.

I left that meeting feeling ON FIRE. I knew I was going to create something special that would teach the younger generation the roots and culture behind surfing. I knew I would be the safest camp in Saint Augustine and that I was going to build life long watermen and water women.

The following week I think I maybe slept a total of 9 hours… I spent every waking hour building the new Surf, Art, Music camp model. I paired all that I had learned from running this surf school, from college, and other experienced surfers.

A lot happened between then and the launch of our beloved surf camp.

During this period my family as a whole took a leap of faith to launch a brand and store around a very similar notion, called Where Salt Meets Soul.

We believe there has been a forgotten notion of connection with the ocean as the surf industry evolved lead by the high performance mentality. People have continued to get into surfing for a status quo and the community has continually failed to teach them the base principal of connection and respect. Surfing is and always has been sacred. It was known as the sport of gods when the Polynesians first pioneered it.

We have fully refined and expanded this Surf Play Create model. We take pride in being the safest surf school in town with an instructor to camper ratio of 1 to 2 and even a 1 to 1 ratio for our Micro Groms. We make sure that each kiddo has a hand ready to grab them out of the water at any moment they feel the slightest bit of fear.

We have watched as countless kiddos who have a healthy fear of the ocean play on the inside with a boogie board for a day or two and then paddle straight out to catch waves for day 3 and 4. As well as kids who take a big wipeout finding comfort in the creative beach activity whether it be art or music to work through that traumatic experience.

Confidence is key with surfing and for us it starts WAY before the kids enter the water. We make sure each kiddo is well versed in rip currents, how to identify them, avoid them and escape them. We make sure the kids know what to expect from their boards, positions you do not want to be in, and how to avoid injury if you find yourself in those scenarios.

The biggest break through I can say we’ve observed is the notion that we give each kiddo the platform to choose surfing on their own time and NEVER force anybody to surf or get into the ocean if they don’t feel up to it.

THIS IS SO VERY IMPORTANT TO US. 

When a kiddo feels they are ready, they will be much more equipped to maintain their fear levels and problem solve in the moment which almost always caters towards faster progression.

I have continued to protect and serve my community through my experience with the ocean by educating each and every student that comes through our camp. I educate them on how to approach the ocean, when it’s okay to enter and when it’s not. I reinforce this approach through safe confidence building practices that will allow a student to work up their strengths and ocean awareness before taking on strong currents and waves.

Every day at camp I am a lifeguard. I am in charge of protecting every Child’s well-being at our camp and ensure their safety. I stay on high alert and practice all of the lifeguarding tactics I learned while working for St.Johns county marine rescue.

Lucky for me, I am still close with all of the local lifeguards and during any given time have the personal numbers of those protecting our strip of sand if anything were to happen. Oftentimes our guard pals will drop in to say hey to our students and remind them they are in good hands.