Rochelle Ballard

Born: 1971
From: Montebello, CA
Known for: First woman surfer to ride inside the tube habitually.

Biography

Rochelle was born in a city called Montebello on the outskirts of East Los Angeles. While she was a young infant, her family moved to the island of Kauai at 6 months old. While growing up here, she met 4-time World Champion Margo Oberg and she started surfing at 12 years old. Rochelle began surfing local competitions and from here advancing to state competitions. Eventually, she went on to nationals and world amateur titles where she placed 4th in the World in 1988 and 1990. Her hard work qualified her to surf professionally on the World Championship Tour in 1991. In 1991, she finished 15th as a world tour rookie pro. She has been in the top 10 in the world since 1994. In 1997, Rochelle won world qualifying series tour and 1998 finished 4 on the tour 1993-2001. She won 8 circuit events plus nonrated 2000 boat trip challenge-held a 6 foot surf in Indonesia. Since then, she came to be known as the best female tuberider. She stayed in the Association of Surfing Professionals for over 10 years. Rochelle also cofounded International Women's Surfing. Her organization that she founded fought to increase the minimum amount paid to women who win prize money on the tour. Her fight ended up in a victory. Although she was successful in her career, she never won a world title but finished runner up in 2002.

Some other interesting facts about Rochelle are that she helped with the movie Blue Crush. Her husband, Bill Ballard, produced the movie. She helped enlist a lot of the current surfers on the tour to work as body doubles and doing stunts for the film. She herself also worked as a body double for the film. She has also been featured a lot in the media.

Read more about women surfers.