Super Surfer!

You May have seen Laura Blears Ching on TV several months ago, when they held the finals of the women's Superstars competition at Rotonda, Florida, in a sports complex built especially for the event. Laura, a 24-year-old Hawaiian whose specialty is surfing--she happens to be, unofficially, the world's number-one professional lady surfer, partly because she's the first and (at this writing) the only one-- finished fifth in a field of 23, picking up $2400 in prize money. Inthe semifinals, held a few weeks earlier in Texas, she'd already won $2600-- and, according to Sports Illustrated, dazzled the assembled multitudes with her "soulfulness," her "John Lennon Vocabulary" and her "alluring figure." Laura, who liked everything about (text continued on page 78) the Superstars except flying back and forth ("Being on a plane is a real drag, man--it makes you want to just nod out; but you can't"), expects to compete again next year--and to do even better.

For one thing, she picked up a little track savvy in this year's bicycle race, in which she pedaled strongly but goofed--out of inexperience-- when she pulled out from the pack too close to a curve.

And next year she plans to put a little more effort into her training--which this year consisted largely of jogging every day and playing ball with her husband in Waianae Park. It was last summer-- on the Fourth of July, in fact--that Laura and Bon Ching, who'd been her friend since school days and with whom she'd already been living for three years, got married. The wedding was held on a mountaintop, with music by Gabby Pahinui, who, like Laura, is number one in his field--Hawaiian slack-key music, so called because it's played on afretless guitar.

In the postceremonial conviviality--everybody was drinking straight Scotch-- Gabby gave his guitar, which he'd used in making several albums, to Laura and Bon for a wedding present.

"It's an old gee-tar, but it has a lot of feeling," she says. So they've been making lots of music together in their house in the country, on the western side of Oahu Makaha.

Laura admits that Bon, who is also learning "regular" guitar and whose brother plays the drums professionally, is the better musician: "I'm always bugging him with stuff like 'Hey, man, how'd you do that?' when he's really trying to get into it--but I can play Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star in slack key." They're both freaks for rock and soul music, and they take in the Diamond Head Crater festival at the start of each year.

They used to go simply because it was a gas: "They'd have all kinds of people (concluded on page 174)Super Surfer!(continued from page 78) mixed in together, man, tourists and family groups along with the junkies, and it was beautiful; sure, there'd be a beef here and there, but that's only natural." Now, though, they mostly go to see their old school chums, who are scattered about the islands. That's because the festival has gotten too organized and commercialized: "They've got these booths now, which you've got to reserve and pay for; but it used to be that people would just go there and camp out." Anyway, some of Laura's best moments with music seem to come when she's alone in the house: "If I'm trying to clean the place or something, I just put on some sides--real loud, man--and rock on out. Somehow, when you've got to dance, you never get that loose." As you might imagine, Laura's not the world's most efficient housekeeper: "I'm always starting to crochet, knit or embroider things, but I never finish anything, so the stuff is all over the house. If you saw it, you'd crack up. Oh, I did finish a set of pillows--but it was easy; they were just big squares that I stuffed with foam rubber and sewed up."

Laura comes naturally by both her athletic ability and her enterprising, unconventional spirit. Her father is a former top professional wrestler who--as Lord James Blears--plied his bone crunching trade all over the States and the Pacific. He taught all his kids to swim at an early age--Laura learned when she was about one and a half--and after they moved to Hawaii (when she was six), the youngsters started spending most of their time on the then-undeveloped beach. Laura, something of a tomboy, also played baseball, football and other traditionally male sports. In school, she competed as part of the girls' swimming team. And, in 1970, she won the title of Hawaii's number-one amateur female surfer. That same year, she won first place in the women's worldwide amateur competition sponsored by Smirnoff (incidentally, Laura's brother Jimmy also holds a world surfing title, so there's no question but that Lord James had the right idea when he pushed his kids into the water). In 1973--after she'd won yet another crown, in the women's division of the 1972 Makaha International Surfing Championships--Laura, by invitation of the Smirnoff people, became the first female surfer to take on the men, in their world professional championships (let's hear it from the equality crowd). And while she didn't win her heat, she did beat out one of her male rivals, who's probably still trying to forget about it. A year later, the sex barrier having been broken, Smirnoff invited six female surfers; they would take part in different heats but would be competing with one another, and the girl with the best score would win $1000--the first prize money ever awarded a distaff surfer--plus the unofficial world title. Of course, you already know who won. Being the world's first, best and only professional lady surfer, though, is anything but a full--time job, and when we called Laura to ask if she'd like to be photographed for our magazine, we reached her on the job at one of the two restaurants functioning in her particular neck of the Hawaiian backwoods. Her answer was "Sure"-- partly because it sounded like fun, partly because Laura, who doesn't appear to have any hang-ups anyway, wanted to remind the world that lady athletes are, indeed, ladies, even if they perform as jocks. We think she's made her point.