BEHIND THE HEADLINES COURTNEY CONLOGUE

Courtney Conlogue is a rising sophomore at Sage Hill School who advanced to the women’s semifinals of the U.S. Open of Surfing this weekend. She lost her heat to the eventual winner and current world title holder, Stephanie Gilmore of Australia.

Conlogue has been steeping in surfer culture since she was 4 years old — more than enough time for her fingers and toes to prune in the water — but she realizes there are some landlubbers who couldn’t recognize a barrel if they were caught in the middle of one. Conlogue was willing to throw back the curtain with her own short explanations of surfing or dummies.

Q: What’s your favorite trick?

A: Pulling into the barrel, a tube ride. It means letting the wave curl over you and watching it curl as you’re in the pit. I like it ‘cause it feels like everything goes in slow motion and it’s really pretty to watch. You become one with the water.

Q: How did you start surfing?

A: My dad pushed me. I was in Mexico, and I saw my dad surfing and I wanted to do it. He took me out to line up and told me to stand up on my boogie board. When I got back to California, he bought me a surfboard. Now, I have about six good ones.

Q: What’s your favorite board and why?

A: My Brazilian board, a performance board which was shaped in Brazil by Tubba. They’re called performance boards because they’re lightweight, and they’re shorter and thinner and let you go where you need to.

My Favorite big-wave board — they’re called guns — would probably be a Bushman, because it’s a solid board and it goes where I want to on the wave. I can charge and I can trust that it will go where I want it to go, and it won’t break. I’ve broken the nose on one. That’s the pointy part of the board.

Q: What’s the biggest misconception about surfers?

A: That all surfers do drugs, which is definitely not true. There’s a lot of educated surfers now. It’s been like that the whole time, we just got a bad rap.

Q: What’s your ultimate goal?

A: Get as many World Championship titles as I possibly can.

Q: Are there enough girls in surfing?

A: The sport of surfing is still a male-dominated sport, but the girls are catching up quite rapidly, and we’re showing that we can go out there and kick their butts.

Q: Can you translate one surf lingo term to something more like English?

A: “Epic” in the surfing world means cool, rad, sick amazing.

“Gnar-gnar” is something I started saying. It started sticking after I went to the World Champion Tour event in Maui. It catches on everywhere now. Anything that’s gnarly now, I say gnar-gnar. Or gnar.