Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Jasset in FLorida Today


Surfing's new wave

Melbourne Beach's Umbel among Brevard County's female teen sensations

BY HILLARD GROSSMAN
FLORIDA TODAY
It's been 20 years since Jan Futch propped up her "competitive" surfboard and stopped traveling around the globe as a touring pro. She had dominated the mid-'80s as the Florida and Southeast champion and was chasing the world's best.
But at 21, she was ready to raise her son.
"What could I do?" she said. "Life starts getting in the way."
Little did she know she'd be the last true world-class champion from Brevard County for the next two decades.
But, that may be about to change, with the emergence of several teenage sensations, including 14-year-old Jasset Umbel of Melbourne Beach.
She has a sweet smile, a cute name and a refreshing perspective on competitive surfing. She also has enough energy to play tag, hide-and-seek and jump on a trampoline after a few hours of surfing at the Ocean Avenue break, just steps from her family's 1937 Cape Cod-style home.
"I just like to surf with my friends," she said.
"She loves people," said her mom, Dorette. "She'd be just as happy if her friends had won."
Don't let the lack of a killer instinct fool you. Her room is full of trophies, some shoulder-high, lending testament to her ability. She's only been surfing for three years, but already has won back-to-back National Scholastic Surfing Association and Eastern Surfing Association East Coast championships.
"She's the real deal, and I don't say that very lightly," Futch said. "I've been watching her since she was little. The first time I laid eyes on her was when I was watching Eddie (her son, Eddie Guilbeau) and the boys in a huge shore break. It was scary. But I saw her take off, and she just charged it. I haven't seen anything like that (from a girl) around here in a long time."
Neither has Quiksilver's Matt Kechele, who spent five seasons on the World Tour.
"I saw her in Cape Hatteras (N.C.) during the Easterns, and she just wanted to free-surf," he said. "She paddled out in these big waves, 6-feet Hawaiian. I mean, pretty big. People were concerned, for sure. But she had no problem. She's definitely got a bright future."
Surfing gets aggressive
It was the girls of yesteryear, including Futch, who set the tone for the local surf scene.
Girls such as Lynn Thomas Vignetti, who won the 1969 East Coast Championships before setting off for a stellar West Coast career, and Cocoa Beach's Sharon Wolfe, a two-time U.S. champion, who won the 1982 East Coast title. There also was Simone Maffey, an East Coast champion from Indialantic, and Satellite Beach's Mary Ann Hayes, now in the East Coast Hall of Fame.
Some have tried to duplicate their feats, girls such as Connie Arias and Kira Sheppard and Lauren McLean. But they've been few and far between.
So what happened in the past 20 years?
"Most of those girls started out on longboards -- that's where most of them got their training -- and they were beautiful surfers," said Dick Catri, a legendary Hall of Fame surfer from Melbourne Beach. "But then, shorter boards came into play. Several adapted very well to them, but surfing got a whole lot more aggressive, and guys were less tolerant about giving up waves to girls, so a lot of the girls gave up.
"Now, there's been a tremendous resurgence in the past 10 years. Some of these girls surf better than the guys, and they keep their femininity doing it."
Acceptance from the guys has been crucial to most female surfers, including Futch, who learned to surf from her brother, Johnny -- a pro.
"Plain and simple, most of the girls today start surfing with other girls," Futch said. whose once-candid reputation with judges helped level the playing surface between men and women. "They do great until they're 15 or 16, but they're so wrapped up in girls surfing. I just don't see where the level (of girls surfing) has accelerated all around."
Where the boys are
Jasset grew up in the shadows of East Coast stars such as Paul Reinecke and David Speir. She also happens to surf with a pretty good group of guys, including Guilbeau, Blake Jones (one of the top 10 progressive surfers on the East Coast) and Marshall Alberga (who once defeated nine-time world champion Kelly Slater in the finals of a Cocoa Beach contest).
"They encourage me," Jasset said.
"Sure, they'd tell her to take a wave, because they didn't want it," laughed her dad, Bob, a former nationally-ranked pro skateboarder who now is a zone manager for Ford Motor Company.
Realistically, Jasset's gracefulness and aggressiveness have impressed the "Inlet boys."
"She's killing it lately," said Guilbeau, 21, one of the area's top surfers and a regular at Ocean Aveue and Sebastian Inlet. "We're stoked because she's always trying to push it in bigger waves.She's eating healthy, she's so smart into it. She's so humble, too. One day I'll hear, 'I got this contest coming up.' But you'd have to hear it from someone else that she won.
"I've never won an East Coast title, and already she's got a couple. It's crazy. She was just a little girl a couple of years ago."
Hasn't been easy
Jasset learned to surf on her dad's longboard when she was 11 as he'd hold onto her ankles.
"She could swim, so after a couple of times, she was up," Bob said. "It started out as a hobby. Then, it got to be where her and her brother (Jack, now 10) would fight to see who'd get on the longboard. One day I said to her, 'Let your brother ride the longboard.' She jumped on my shortboard and it didn't take long. Then they started fighting over the shortboard."
By 12, O'Neill representatives in California had seen her on a shortboard and were asking to sponsor her.It was a big step for Jasset, especially to be on the same "team" with WCT superstar Cory Lopez.
But, it hasn't gone to her head. She still keeps her dad as her coach.
"He's a good coach, but I think I'm a better surfer than him," she giggled.
There is little doubt. She's already won 13 of 24 NSSA events, including her first one at age 11 and another one Sunday at Sebastian, often celebrating with ice cream from Moo's in Indialantic.
But it hasn't exactly been as smooth as the soft-serve cones she enjoys.
Jasset was born with double-deficit dyslexia, although her audio-visual shortcomings were not realized until later in life. After some trying times through public schools and private schools, Dorette now keeps her in home-school courses through New Covenant Christian School in Melbourne.
"We keep her home-schooled (now in eighth grade), but it's not because of surfing," Dorette said. "It's a learning deformity, which we discovered later, wondering why she wasn't reading."
But Jasset refuses to use it as a crutch in her sport, even though she struggled at first with such intricacies as learning which direction to take on a surfboard and when the clock would run out on her heats.
"In the beginning, it was different." Bob explained. "She couldn't understand there were 5 minutes left in the heat. She'd block everything out and go full-bore until the horn blew. But she's over all that now."
"I actually think it leads to more creativity on her turns," Dorette said, "because she thinks things out differently."
"I think she's getting better," her little brother said.
Wave of the future
Jasset is part of a new wave of female surfers who could take the sport to higher levels. Locally, there is Christa Alves (19), Savannah Bradley (15), Emily Ruppert (13) and Nikki Viesins (12), to name a few.
Just last week, 14-year-old Tyler Wright of Australia -- who also learned to surf with her brothers -- became the youngest female surfer to win an ASP World Tour event by capturing the Beachley Classic in her home country. The irony of Wright's win came just a few days after seven-time women's world champion Layne Beachley announced she'd be retiring in December.
Earlier this year, another 14-year-old, Malia Manuel of Hawaii, became the youngest to win the U.S. Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach, Calif.
"There are definitely some young girls out there in California, like (national champion) Courtney Conlogue," Kechele said. "All of those girls are beating some of the guys.Right now, you've got a good group of girls in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast states, like Quincy Davis, and Ariel and Alexis Engstrom (all of Montauk, N.Y.).
"I think the movie 'Blue Crush' would have got them fired up years ago. I know we've had a competition gap, but as surfing continues to grow and capture people's interest, these girls will be a big part of it."
Jasset realizes World Tour stars, such as Slater and twins C.J. and Damien Hobgood, all began their surfing careers just minutes from her home.
"I know they started here, so you know it can be done," said Jasset, who also would love to work with animals as a veterinarian.
"She's such a sweet girl," Futch said. "Too many of them lose that sweetness."
As long as those ice cream celebrations continue, Jasset should have a very sweet future.

A look at Jasset Umbel
Age: 14
Hometown: Melbourne Beach
Big Feats: Winning Open Women and Explorer girls titles at the NSSA East Coast Championships, ESA Southeast Regional and East Coast girls Champion in 2008
Sponsors: O'Neill, Lost surfboards, Future Fins, Xtrak, Nixon, DNA energy drink, Ocean Minded and Catalyst surfshop.

1 comment:

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