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Honolulu Star Bulletin's Midweek
Riding A Wave With Girls Who Surf
By Linda Dela Cruz
Wednesday - July 01, 2009
When Girls Who Surf’s Cherry Fu works overtime, she just may be
riding a rolling wave.
“The first thing I share with my students is the standup position,”
says Fu with a hearty laugh. “We get to the goal first! We know that’s
what they want to accomplish. We get right to it. We give them tips and
techniques, and safety situations.”
She keeps the classes small, with two to four students to one
teacher. A basic lesson runs about 90 minutes. Sessions are arranged by
reservation, and taught with the help of her staff of 10 surf
instructors, both men and women.
“It’s a lot like lifeguarding and firefighting in that it has a huge
physical component to it,” Fu says. “The staff is hardworking.”
She gets the word out about Girls Who Surf by attending professional
networking events, as well as connecting with travel and tourism
activity agents.
Using her past athletic coaching and academic teaching experience,
the Honolulu resident pours her energy into training her staff and
teaching the students.
And she is determined to make a splash.
“I want us to be one of the leading surfing operations in the world,”
explains Fu, a Harvard graduate who moved to Oahu from Boston in 2002.
She started the company in 2005 because she loves surfing and wanted
to have an impact on the surfing world. She acknowledges the support of
her family, friends and staff.
One of the challenges of running the business, she says, are state
regulations.
“They are licensing operations, so there is a mandate that we need to
have instructors who are licensed by the Department of Land and Natural
Resources,” she says. “However, they test once a month, and they test
some people at one time and there is a waiting list. This slows our
growth, and it slows our profession from advancing. When people come to
Hawaii, the surf instructor is one of the people they look for. So the
customers don’t have as much access as they can to instructors because
of that.”
Fu admits that this is not an easy job.
“Michael Jordan makes basketball look easy. Tiger Woods makes golf
looks easy. It is because they are skilled at it. Surfing is a
challenging sport. If you think it’s easy, it’s not that easy.”
And that’s where Girls Who Surf comes in.
For more information, call 772-4583, or log onto
girlswhosurf.com.
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Honolulu Star Bulletin.
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