Girls Surfboard

While surfing competitions are gaining popularity today in their varied forms, they were not so widespread a few years ago. Women's competitions in particular have become more popular than they used to be. This inspires young female surfers to work hard at what they love doing, knowing that they are being encouraged.

In 2003, MTV came up with an idea to use the upcoming sport of all-women surfing in one of their reality TV shows. This resulted in a show called Surf Girls being aired over the span of almost two months, starting 12 May to July 7 2003.

There were fourteen amateurs competing for a chance to start a professional career in the surfing industry. These were all young women from ages eighteen to twenty four, and most of them had never taken part in a competition of this scale before.

The groups were divided according to the board size they used, longboard and shortboard. Eight women belonged to the shortboard category, while six belonged to the longboard category. The challenging competition resulted in two girls, Neva Massey of the shortboard category and Aimee Vogelgesang of the longboard category, dropping out after the second episode. After the third episode, Lauren Stinson, of the shortboard category, dropped out and Bonnie Campanella, also of the shortboard category, was eliminated.

In the sixth episode of the show, Katie Thornton was eliminated as well. She belonged to the shortboard category. In the longboard category, Mary Osbourne, 21, was the winner. In the shortboard category it was Jen Pollock, 24. They were both studying in college while working as waitresses. Jen Pollock was from Kailua, Hawaii, and Mary Osbourne was from Ventura in California.

All the contestants were from different parts of the United States, except for Neva Massey, who was from Puerto Rico.

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