My Goals:
To achieve top professional ranking in all aspects of competitive windsurfing, while expanding a career in the industry that increases the presence of competitive windsurfing within the United States.
My Life:
Coming from an active family with two brothers and one sister, sports were always a big part of my life. Because both my parents are from the east coast, I grew up playing sports like soccer, hockey, and lacrosse. My brothers and I would go to summer hockey and lacrosse camps at Bowdoin college, where my Grandfather was the athletic director. I first experienced sailing when I was around 7 or 8, when my dad would take my brother and I out on a little sunfish. At that age it seemed like we were sailing so fast! My dad would try to tip the boat as far as he could without capsizing it, while my brother and I were almost falling off the upwind side, trying to get the windward rail back down in the water. It was a lot of fun!
The next big excursion was when my dad decided to buy a 38ft sailboat down in Ventura, Ca. My younger brother and I were only 10 and 12 when we got to take two weeks off to school to sail the boat up to San Francisco. That was the first time I experienced the true power of the ocean. There would be days of sailing in heavy seas, where you would not see land for hours. We ran into a few storms on the way up, making the trip a lot longer and much more challenging than expected. The trip taught me a lot about the ocean and the wind. I guess you can say this was one of the reasons why I wanted to try windsurfing.
I started windsurfing when I was Round 12 years old when I took a summer camp at Lake Merritt. They had windsurfing gear to use, but nobody who really knew how to use it. We were sent out on the water for the day, and spent the next couple hours trying to figure out how everything worked. After a week of trying to figure it out, I was finally able to sail where I wanted and turn around when I wanted. One of the days got windy enough to get up onto a slight plane, and that was when I was hooked! Growing up in the eighties and nineties, I became obsessed with windsurfing. Every weekend I wanted to be on the water. I was wanting to learn every new trick, jibe, jump, whatever! I would beg my dad to go down and work on his boat, just so that I could go windsurfing. Looking at the magazines and seeing what the legends of the sport were doing, I knew this was something that was going to be a big part of my life! Once I was old enough to drive a car it was a goal of mine to try and windsurf almost every day, regardless of conditions. Since then, there’s no looking back.
After graduating high school, I passed on lacrosse scholarships to Ivy League and Division 3 Colleges in order to pursue a career in professional windsurfing. That year, I traveled throughout the US and Caribbean teaching windsurfing with the ABK. During the winter, I spent my time sailing Bonaire in the Caribbean, the place where I was introduced to the finer aspects of freestyle windsurfing strengthening the pursuit.
In 2003 I returned to college and attended California State University in Chico, to pursue my education and passion for lacrosse. During my first year, I was the first student in Chico State history to become a Lacrosse All-American as freshmen. Although I still have a passion for Lacrosse, the drive to push the limits of windsurfing is much more powerful.
Since 2004, I have been actively involved in the windsurfing industry, exploring the world and sailing places such as Bonaire, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Spain, Germany, Austria, the Bahamas, as well as my home, North America.
