Written and Photographed by Nicholas Paoni
Victoria is a typical 15-year old; unless, of course, you count her amazing accomplishments riding her surfboard, which are anything but typical. You see she is the reigning USA Surfing, Girls U16 National Champion. She also shares the NSSA National Champion title with her awesome teammates on the San Dieguito Academy High School (SDA) surf team. Prior to these she won 2 national titles in the Interscholastic Championships for Middle School NSSA.
Victoria comes from a surfing family and has been surfing since the age of eight. Her father, mother, brother, all her aunts and uncles and her grandmother are surfers. Additionally, her uncles, brother, cousin and Dad were lifeguards at some point in their lives. She credits her father with introducing her to the sport, and he is her main coach. He also is a coach for the girls’ squad at SDA. Victoria also works with John Daniels and Ryan Simmons, the USA Surfing Team coach.
She finds the women on the various Surfing Tours to be super inspirational and definitely wants to follow in their footsteps and turn pro someday. She is preparing for that by surfing three-to-four hours a day when the surf is up. When it’s not, she works with a personal trainer, Wes Collins, to help prepare her out of the water. Although surfing is her main interest, she also likes to bake, do art and be creative.
Victoria obviously loves the sport of surfing. She told me when she is not riding, she is thinking about riding. She said that riding on a wave is super special. She feels the energy of the wave pushing her and she finds it really special to share a connection with Mother Nature.
Before I finished her interview I asked Victoria if there was anything else she wanted readers to know about her that I hadn’t covered. Her response “Oh yeah, my Mom shapes my surfboards”. That, taken together with everything else Victoria told me, has me convinced that if someday a clever geneticist discovers a gene variant that’s linked to familial surfing prowess, it’s a good bet that Victoria has two copies of it nestled comfortably in her DNA.
