City sponsors Surf Camps

Surf City USA© residents have a chance to improve their surfing skills this summer with the first ever city sponsored Surf Camps presented by the HB Surf School.

As the official city-authorized program, the new Surf Camps are designed for advanced beginners, intermediate and advanced surfers. There are no age restrictions but camp surfers should be proficient ocean swimmers. The week-long camps begin June 23, with 10 sessions to be offered. Cost is $185 per person and sign ups can be done through the Sands or at www.surfcity-hb.org.

“We are pleased to begin this new surf camp program for our residents,” said Dottie Hughes, community services supervisor for the city of Huntington Beach. “Surfers who attend these camps will receive quality instruction from a well qualified instructor.”

For those who have the basics down, the Surf Camps will help improve overall paddling and board riding ability, master a variety of basic and advanced maneuvers, understand tides and swell, and learn important ocean safety. For would-be contest surfers, competitive analysis and techniques will also be covered.

The surf camp instructor is Bill Sharp, who also heads the HB Surf School and runs the city of Huntington Beach Learn to Surf program. Sharp, a former pro surfer from South Africa, has been coaching and teaching surfing for more than 30 years. He is the former coach of the South African National Surf team.

Sharp’s surfing roots run deep and have come full circle to Huntington Beach, where he has lived since 2001. Raised in Durban, South Africa, Sharp grew up surfing competitively and became a founding member of the SA Professional Surfing Association where he surfed international contests held there. He surfed the Australian leg of the pro tour in 1980.

Sharp first came to Huntington Beach in 1996 with the South African national team for the ISA World Junior Games, where his team finished fourth in the world. It was then he met Andy Verdone, Huntington High surf coach, and subsequently arranged for the Huntington Beach High School surf team to travel to Durban and Jeffreys Bay, South Africa in 1997.

In 1998, Sharp was recruited by Surf, Dive & Ski to develop a surf school and run beach retail operations for the company’s seven stores on the island of Jersey, one of the British Channel Islands. In four years, he built the surf school program from a dozen students to more than 2,000 students each summer.

As a coach, Sharp has specialized in teaching competitive structure and counts numerous pro surfers as his former students including world champion Martin Potter.

For more information about camp dates, see The Sands, visit www.surfcity-hb.org or email hbsurfschool@yahoo.com.