This piece is excerpted from the SURFER Interview with Caitlin Simmers in the new print issue of SURFER. Order your copy here.
Caitlin Simmers marches to the unpredictable beat of her own drum. While the Oceanside, California, native is currently in contention for her first world title after just her second year on Tour, the 5’2” progressive aerialist and tube-fiend is anything but one-dimensional. Yes, she’s a weapon in the jersey, but, in the vein of Tom Curren or Dane Reynolds, she’s got that California-cool. It’s refreshing and inimitable. Her interests extend well beyond the beach and include skating, music, hip-hop dancing, reading, film editing, and even botany. Here she is in her words:
SURFER: In terms of Championship Tour dominance, do you feel like there’s a new era of American, and particularly Californian, supremacy on the horizon?
Caitlin Simmers: There’s definitely a lot of surf parents here, so there freaking better be [laughs]. With so many surf dads at Lowers, there better be some prodigies coming up out of there. But yeah, I hope so. There are some young girls in California coming up that are really good, so I’m excited to see that.
Given the way you surf, I think it’s easy for people to forget you were still in high school up until a few months ago. Are you psyched your studies are behind you now?
Yeah, but I liked school to a certain extent. When I had free time, it was a good thing to help me take my mind off things. And I like learning, so it was cool. It felt weird when I graduated and had nothing to do. I think I still want to keep learning, so I’ll probably take some college classes.
On any specific subject?
Yeah, I want to learn about plants or something to do with nature and biology. I’d like to do classes in person, so I’m going to see if I can do them at the end [of the CT season]. I feel like it’s pretty hard to learn about plants online because you want to see the plants and do experiments and stuff. I’ll start looking into it soon. I’ve just been doing so much and haven’t had time.
Well, you’re a little busy. How did you balance course work with you, know, charging Pipe and qualifying for the Olympics?
I just did it whenever I had time–and you kind of have a lot of free time on tour. If you think about it, we’ve got 10 days in a waiting period. They only need four days to run the comp, that’s at least six days of twiddling your thumbs. Sometimes the waves are good and you’re surfing and doing other things. The hardest part of having so much free time is that you have to be inside of your mind. So, it’s good to have something like school to occupy and distract myself. I really like to read and distract myself that way.
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