Everybody’s had their eye on Sierra Kerr for years now. Aside from having an exceptional level of natural talent, she has the obvious benefit of soaking in a lifetime of knowledge from a father who reached the highest levels of surfing. It’s a recipe that naturally leads onlookers and fans of surfing to expect great success for a young woman whose prime is still in front of her.
But as The Inertia’s Joe Carberry pointed out, our obsession with what’s next can be limiting.
“We have a tendency to say things like ‘she is the future,’ or ‘she is what surfing will look like a few years down the road.’ With Sierra Kerr, she is women’s surfing right now: dynamic, powerful, progressive,” he said after working with the father-daughter duo to produce a film highlighting the sport’s most promising young surfers. “All the things that make surfing great, she personifies.”
You might imagine Kerr family sessions aren’t entirely like an Average Joe’s swell day with a buddy or two. Like this day at The Box, where Sierra soaks up nuggets of info from her dad covering everything from lineup landmarks to war stories of his first session at the West Oz slab. Josh shares why he likes smaller boards on slabby waves, she picks his brain about where to sit and pick off waves her first time out. At the core of it though, they’re no different than two best friends stoked to chase great waves together.
“So good to share a session with the little girl out there,” he says, instantly giving a play-by-play of his favorite highlight. “One looked like it was gurgling off the end and she was committing, so that was pretty sick to see.”
And not too long after that it’s Sierra who’s asked for a quick picture with a couple of the guys they just shared waves with. Because she’s women’s surfing right now.
