Friday morning, around a dozen young girls were eager to hit the waves in Oceanside and surf with their idols.
They were participants in the Rising Tides mentoring program run by the World Surf League. It's a chance for young surfers to learn from the pros.
"It was really exciting," said Tate Archambault, who was participating in the program for the first time.
"I asked, 'Do they always want to be a professional surfer?'" she said. "They said they knew, like when they were just 11, that they wanted to keep doing that."
That's also Archambault's dream — to be a professional surfer. On Friday, she was being mentored by Encinitas native Alyssa Spencer, a two-time Super Girl Surf Pro winner.
"It's pretty amazing for us as mentors to the younger girls to, like, inspire the next generation," Spencer said.
It's her way of giving back. She was once in Archambault's shoes, participating in the Rising Tides program and being mentored by other athletes.
"It's pretty cool to see that all come full circle now and be one of the mentors," Spencer said. "It almost doesn't really feel real sometimes.”
In addition to mentoring, she was there to participate in the Super Girl Surf Festival, billed as the world's largest women's pro surfing competition. 176 athletes are competing in the event, which goes through Sunday. It's a far cry from when the festival started 19 years ago, when only a handful of athletes participated.
“it's amazing to see kind of a full circle moment because now there are a number of spotlights that are shining on women in a variety of different sports,” Super Girl CEO Rick Bratman said.
Super Girl is more than surfing. There's also skating, BMX and beach volleyball. In all, more than 600 women are participating across 10 sports.
"Oceanside is an amazing surf community, and it's one of the places that we're able to not only do an event that celebrates these amazing women ... but also has the area that we can do volleyball and soccer and live concerts and classes and speakers and really create an entire festival environment,” he said.
But core to Super Girl's message of empowering women is the mentoring program, to seed the next generation, Bratman said.
"And that's really what it's about," he said. "Inspiring and empowering women in not just surf, but in all these different walks of life."
The festival also features live concerts with artists such as Lupe Fiasco, Plain White T's and Surfer Girl. The event goes from 8 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. through Sunday and is free to attend.
