Growing surf team mingles with star surfer

For the members of the newly formed USC surf team, Tuesday presented a unique opportunity.

After attending a screening of star surfer Jaime O’Brien’s new movie, Who is J.O.B?, the team was able to meet O’Brien and talk shop.

“It was cool to talk to an athlete like that who’s performing on a different level,” said Mark Lathrum, a senior majoring in business administration. “It was definitely good for our surf team to see that.”

But meeting a top surfer meant something more to a team striving to make a name for itself.

“Basically, this helps our publicity a lot. Everyone here is a surfer or a skater or an extreme sport athlete,” said Mariah Gill, a junior majoring in environmental studies. “The surf team, especially the competitive part of it, fuels itself off of sponsors and things like that.”

As of now, the team seems like it can only rise in recognition and rankings. Its sponsors include ZICO Pure Premium Coconut Water, Sporting-Sails by Sukrafte, Wellen Surf and Bubble Gum Surf Wax — and more seem to be on the way. Just this week, the team received $1,000 from an anonymous donor.

But Lathrum stressed that this event wasn’t just for networking. It also gave the team members an opportunity to present themselves as a unit, he said, and take time to relax and have fun with their fellow competitors.

The team also used this time to reach out to other Southern California surf teams, including groups from Cal State Long Beach and UCLA.

“We all have really busy schedules, and most of the time we’re in competitive mode. It’s nice to be somewhere where we can have a little fun and be together at night. We were in an environment that we were very comfortable in — with other surfers,” Lathrum said.

The invite to the event means a lot for the new Trojan surf team, which just began its journey last year after a two-year hiatus. Lathrum, along with Jena Sussex and John Funnell, both juniors majoring in health promotion and disease prevention, started the team with the intention of being able to give one of the biggest schools in Southern California an actual surf team.

“We’re the University of Southern California — just the fact that we have that name and we didn’t even have a surf team here was something I thought we needed to change,” Lathrum said. “I knew a handful of guys that surfed from my close friends, so I started from there. There had to be a bunch of people out there who were excited to compete and have people around them to surf, and after the first day we had about a solid four.”

What started out as a group of four has grown into a group that is split into a club and a team — members of the club surf recreationally, while the team is more competitive. There are about 15 core surfers on the team who compete on a regular basis.

“It’s just a different level of competitiveness,” Lathrum said. “Each one is just as fun as the other — it’s just a matter of what level you want to be in.”

The club’s cohesion can be attributed to one basic thing, Gill said.

“Everyone likes to surf and we all like to be in the water,” she said.