Scheduling conflicts at heart of bigger problem

After 15 years as director of the South Bay High School Surf League, John Joseph resigned last month, the day prior to the league championships between Mira Costa and Peninsula.

During his tenure, the number of participating schools grew from four to as many as 13 and the number of girl surfers increased from fewer than a dozen annually to over 100.

Despite his abrupt resignation, He did not, as some whispered, abandon the league that he had held together since shortly after its founding in 1993.

“I made sure the judges and organizers were lined up so the championship contest would run smoothly, which it did.  I just didn’t want to be on the beach that day,” Joseph said.

The reason came down to a long simmering disagreement over the league’s direction.

“Ninety percent of the kids competing will never compete again after high school. I was running the contests for those kids. I felt the league was becoming too ‘top end’ driven,” he said.

The conflict between winning and sportsmanship is common in high school sports. In the South Bay Surf League’s case, the problem is centered around scheduling the season’s 15 to 30 contests. Unlike high school athletes playing CIF sanctioned sports, surfers can compete in non school competitions during the school season. 

“Scheduling is already the most difficulty aspect of running the surf league, because we have 10 schools from seven districts, all with different class and holiday schedules. And we have to allow for rescheduling on days the surf is too small or too rough. Add to that accommodating kids who want to compete in conflicting NSSA and WSA events, or go family vacations and scheduling becomes impossible.

“The season is supposed to run from October through January. This year it ran through March and some year’s it’s been April,” he said.

Joseph began surfing in 1955, when he was 12, at 2nd Street in Hermosa. His dad, a legendary swim coach at Santa Monica City College, gave him a 10-foot Hobie, one of the first foam surfboards. The board had been give to his dad by pro surfers Ricky Gregg and Mickey Munoz in appreciation for him coaching them.

The first time Joseph brought the board to 2nd Street, Dewey Weber was in the lifeguard tower. Weber saw Joseph struggling to carry the heavy board across the beach and helped him get it to the water and to catch his first waves, an act that would cement their lifelong friendship.

Joseph played football, basketball and baseball at Bishop Montgomery High School, and football at El Camino and Long Beach State. But he still found time to surf well enough to compete professionally and to be sponsored by Greg Noll and swim trunk maker Sun Deck.

One day, in 1966, a fellow South Bay surfer saved his life. Joseph was on patrol with the 25th Infantry squad near the Cambodian border when the squad was ambushed. An Army rescue helicopter attempted to land in a clearing, but was driven off by Vietcong fire. Then a second helicopter arrived, but it also was driven off. Finally a third helicopter arrived, and despite heavy enemy fire, the helicopter touched down in a clearing long enough for Joseph and his squad to climb aboard.

“After we cleared the area,” Joseph recalled, “the pilot turned in his seat to ask if we were okay. But all he could say when he saw me was ‘‘F…ing J.J.’ And all I could say was, ‘Hey pal.’ I never saw him again until we got back home,” Joseph said.

The pilot was 21-year-old Hermosan Jeff “Peff” Eick, who surfed for the Dewey Weber team before volunteering for the Army.

In 2008, Joseph had the opportunity to repay Eick in a modest way by inducting him into the Hermosa Beach Surfer’s Walk of Fame. Joseph is a 2004 inductee and a member of the Walk of Fame selection committee.

Upon his return from Vietnam, Joseph spent a year surfing on the North Shore and then returned to the South Bay to teach at El Segundo High. But the pay wasn’t sufficient to support his wife and two boys, so he went to work in sales for a Rochester-based aerospace company.

The worked allowed him the flexibility to coach surfing at South High when his sons Brett and John attended South in the late ’90s, and to take on responsibility for the fledgling South Bay High School Surf League during the 1996-97 season.

Even then, there was tension between old school surfers like Joseph, for whom surfing was a lifestyle and coaches and parents for whom surfing was foremost, a competition.

Mira Costa surf team coach Ray Gubser touched on the subject at his retirement party in 1999, when he recalled the criticism he encountered for stressing the spirit of surfing over the prevailing “win at any cost” philosophy. Mira Costa volleyball teams were perennial winners because its players were raised at the beach. For the same reason, Mira Costa’s surf team was expected to win.

“I’ve surfed for 42 years,” Gubser told his team during his goodbye remarks. “I taught my sons to surf, and now they are teaching my grandchildren. Surfing is something to be kept with you all of your life.”

“I wasn’t sure the team or their parents would pick up on it. But judging from the comments the kids wrote in the book, I guess they did,” he told a reporter that evening.

Surf team members had presented Gubser with a book of photographs by Hermosa’s pioneer surf photographer Leroy Grannis. The book was inscribed with notes of appreciation.

“I used to approach sports like a war. It was cool to compete and have a good time, and not get bawled out for losing,” one team member wrote.

Joseph expressed a similar sentiment last month, upon his resignation from the surf league.

“Every season a few meets come down to a couple of points,” he said. “Every one pretty much can anticipate the high end results. These are the surfers who receive most of the accolades.

“But the contests’ outcomes can hang on whether a surfer finishes fifth rather than sixth in the six surfer  heats.”

“Some of the loudest cheers on the beach come when this happens and the less skilled surfers get to experience the same thrills as their more accomplished teammates.

“These may be my most enjoyable times on the beach,” Joseph said. DZ

A sea change at the surf league

Gray’s, Zaun’s success led to emphasis on league surfing as an individual rather than team sport

Twelve years ago John Joseph walked into Toe’s Tavern, where I was bartending, and asked if I would get a crew together to judge the South Bay High School Surf League. I recruited John Grannis and Roy Rawlins.

It was hard getting up at 5 a.m. in the dead of winter. The frost bitten temperatures didn’t help the rheumatoid arthritis crippling both my hips, but once we arrived on the scene the enthusiastic surf teams and their grateful parents made everything worthwhile.

The parents were loaded down with coffee, hot chocolate, fruit, cases of giant muffins and Krispy Kreame Donuts. Palos Verdes High School parents would set up a big propane barbecue and make omelets.

John Joseph was always there a half hour before everyone else to be sure everything ran smoothly. Everyone was appreciative, there were no complaints.

A lot of people think Peninsula’s Alex Grey and Mira Costa’s Dane Zaun are the two best surfers to come out of the South Bay. These two surfers had a big impact on the surf league, changing it from a team sport to more of an individual sport.

Gray and Zaun had major sponsors and brand new cars by their sophomore years. Gray was given a Mercedes by his sponsor Volcom.

Grey shredded the body board heats, standing up in the tube doing 360s on the way out. This upset a lot of coaches and parents. They’d yell at Joseph and me all the way back to the parking lot after the meets. They wanted Gray disqualified for standing up. We told them that it didn’t matter that he stood up because he performed the best maneuvers prone, as well.

Every year since then, there has seemed to be more controversy and less team spirit, no matter how hard Joseph worked to keep the league together.

Joseph took the schools that didn’t have strong teams and put them up against other schools of the same caliber. Instead of having a contest everyday he ran two areas at the same time, allowing four schools to compete at once. He poured his heart and soul in to the South Bay Surf League, showing up everyday before sun up to have everything ready when the surfers and judges arrived.

He carried all the chairs, tables, flags and equipment down to the water’s edge, despite crippling arthritis in his hips and knees. He never complained and greeted everyone with a big smile while thanking them for coming.

He did an incredible job for surfing because of his love for the students, parents, his friends the coaches. I don’t know what led to his resignation because I love being the head judge and didn’t want to get in the middle of anything. I do know that John Joseph will be missed. DZ