Sea students
By MILOS BLAGOJEVIC Special to The Daily Press
SM BEACH — When Mary Setterholm looks at the ocean, she sees more than an endless expanse of mystic blue.
She sees comfort. She sees relief. It helps her fight anger and pain.
Setterholm, a surfer who won the 1972 Women’s U.S. Surfing Championship at 17, has been through a pattern of abuse and trauma in her life. She was abused by a baby-sitter and Catholic clergy growing up. She was abused by her husband after getting married and having children, which led her to seek help at a shelter for battered women and children. Her father was a drug-dealer.
But Setterholm, who grew up in nearby West Los Angeles, not only turned her life around through the crashing waves of Southern California’s lush beaches, but has also helped others in tough situations find salvation via the beach.
Setterholm, 51, is the founder of the non-profit LA Surf Bus, which offers free ocean safety and surf lessons to inner-city children. She also is the founder of the Surf Academy, which became the city of Santa Monica’s official surf school in 2002.
Setterholm, a resident of Hermosa Beach, gives lessons in the morning while attending classes at Loyola Marymount University in the afternoon. She also continues to mentor her five children, ages 19-29.
Besides winning the 1972 Surfing Championship, Setterholm also won the U.S. Triathlon Series in Oceanside in 1997 — three years before the triathlon became an Olympic sport. The victory qualified Setterholm, a recent YWCA Woman of the Year, for the national championship before she faced more adversity, getting struck by a car while bicycling one day.
So what did Setterholm do while recovering? She went down to the beach and prayed for inspiration.
And with that, the Surf Academy was born.
Last week, Setterholm took some time out of her packed schedule to discuss the triumphs and tribulations in her life with the Daily Press.
What’s the best way to describe the surfing programs you’re involved in, specifically the santa monica surf academy and la surf bus?
“We’re all about beach fun, taking your surfing to a whole new level. We’re beyond what you expect. It’s about getting back a connection you were born with, in my opinion. I think we’re all born with a nature connection and everyone’s looking for it. Surfing is one way to connect. It’s more than a sport, way more than a sport. It’s a life, any surfer will tell you that, same thing with a skier. All the nature sport people will tell you that.”
Besides those programs, you also taught a surfing class at santa monica college for four semesters. What are your feelings on that experience?
“I actually started the program there. Maggie (LeDuc), who was a (physical education) professor, approached me and said, ‘Could you put together a surfing class for us?’ She didn’t surf. I put together the whole program. It was huge, we had about 70 students and we had to turn away about 50. It was an enormous success. I thoroughly enjoyed teaching it and it was a great program. I think college surfing has arrived.”
As far as the surf academy is concerned, what makes it different from other surfing schools?
“I would say it’s our graduated approach to teaching. We separate the girls from the boys, and there’s a different approach with each gender that seems to accelerate the individual in their progress. Also, we take children that don’t know how to swim, because our approach is we want to make every child, swimmer or non-swimmer, wave-ready. A child who may know how to swim really good in a pool is not necessarily any safer than a child who can’t swim in the ocean. It’s really all about teaching the children, and even adults, how to be wave-ready and what to do when a wave comes, even with or without a board, and how to read the surf. We build on ocean awareness. We probably spend more time on ocean awareness than on other programs, on currents and what makes the waves.”
Is there any concern or danger in taking kids who can’t swim?
“I’ve been really impacted by the drown-ings that have happened at the beach. We’ve not had any situations nearly remotely like that in our surf school. I had a reporter once ask me, ‘You had a kid drown?’ and I said, ‘No, children drown at the beach sometimes, they’re not mine.’”
What’s the importance of the la surf bus program considering that it is designed to help inner-city youth?
“I think that it’s going in a direction that I think the surfing culture itself should be going. I think the culture of surfing should be more responsible to the at-risk population. When I say at-risk, I mean at-risk not exposed to the sea, whether you have money or not. Now, we go after the ones that don’t have the money. A kid in Beverly Hills that’s never been to the ocean is just as much at-risk as a kid that’s on welfare that’s never been to the ocean, there’s no difference between them — none. I take the at-risk at-risk.”
What’s the response from these inner-city kids who might not be familiar with surfing?
“There are other surf schools that do ‘one-day specials,’ where they’ll bring kids down to the beach, but it’s one time. It’s not enough to show the children the landscape of the sport and the surprises you see in one day. Children need to spend a continuum of time in the water. What we do is, just as an example, the children from MacArthur Park, they come every Friday all summer long. That’s their beach day. We send a bus to pick them up and we bring them down, at our expense, and they get a day at the beach and they’re surfing, bodyboarding. A lot of times these kids from these neighborhoods, a lot of them the first day they don’t get in the water that much, they’re just in awe. But the second and third visit, they’re all over it, they’ve brought friends, the bus is packed. It’s just nuts. The kids sell it to their friends. By the end of the summer they get eight visits total, it’s an eight-week program. They’re surfing, they’re picking up the boards, we don’t have to watch them like we’re scared to death. They’ve been through it and they’re surfing. I see a lot of them when I’m driving around town and they say, ‘Hey, I got a board.’ It’s just gnarly. It’s just insane when that happens and you’re in downtown LA.”
Out of the two programs (santa monica surf academy and la surf bus), which one puts a bigger smile on your face? Which one are you more proud of?
“I will say the child puts a smile on my face. Programs are benign. I would say seeing a child connect is what thrills me. Hearing their questions, their innocent questions, too. You have a responsibility on both sides of the fence. I will say that I feel the sense of great satisfaction doing the surf bus program because not only do we get the kids from LA, but we get the kids from Santa Monica as well. Therefore, the city of Santa Monica would take all the kids they’ve wanted us to take as well. I don’t want any accolades for surf bus, although I’ve gotten them. I’ve got Woman of The Year, all that kind of stuff. I really feel it’s what surfing should do. It’s getting to a level point, and this is just a bare beginning of what I think surfing should be doing. The thing is I got the business far enough to where we have the means to do it, and now, it’s like,‘Let’s go after grant money.’ Oh my God, could people please go on my Web site and donate, this is a big nut to carry, it cuts into my tuition, you have no idea. It’s basically my tuition money, I hold that out.”
How has the history of abuse in your life affected you today?
“It’s personal, but my God it sure is out there. I’m labeled a trauma survivor, that’s what my label is. I would say that for some of us who’ve been through a lot of trauma, the one incredible calming resource that helps you wrestle some anger or pain and helps relieve and comfort is the sea. Surfing took me when I just was a wild child, so to speak, and taught me lessons, because, especially after the clergy abuse, authority was meaningless to me. It was just meaningless. The church meant everything to me. Now I work with the Catholic Church helping other survivors and I’m a theology major, so I’ve come full circle. But until then, I was just a wild thing. I would not listen to anybody. The only thing that I listened to was the sea. The sea was like a metaphor for life. If you weren’t ready, the chance passed you by, and that would be a wave. If you weren’t paying attention, you would get slammed. There was a natural authority that I paid attention to and I was able to bring that into life overall and re-approach things. Every bad day does have its end like a bad wipeout.”
How does the history of abuse in your life help you connect with the at-risk inner-city kids involved in la surf bus, who might have similar situations at home?
“Without a doubt because I knew what the sea could do. There has been an unspoken bonding, and I don’t understand how it works, but if there’s a bunch of kids in the group and I want to pick one, I end up almost invariably picking one that went through a lot of stuff like I did. I know what it’s like to be waiting for business to be done as a kid. There seems to be a connection with the kids who’ve come from rough homes that there were some drugs because my dad was a dealer. Violence in the home, there just seems to be a resonance there.”
Between your two biggest competitive accomplishments (the 1972 women’s u.s. Surfing championship and the 1997 u.s. Triathlon series), separated by more than two decades, which one are you more proud of?
“I would say the surfing. I was surprised by both, but I’m always more proud of the surfing. I miss triathlon, I’d like to get back into it. But I know that my first love without a doubt is surfing. I really appreciate the discipline that triathlon gave me. I feel like I’ve brought it back to the sport. I would say if I had to pick between the two sports, it’d be surfing.”
Why the experimentation with triathlon when surfing was your true love?
“I wasn’t ready to come back to surfing at one point. In 1997, I never thought I’d be surfing. I love the sport. Because of my dad being a dope dealer and he sold to all the top pros, you can only hang around so long when that kind of stuff is going on. I didn’t know my dad my whole life, he wasn’t in the picture, but when he came back in my life it was hell. I love the sport of surfing, I just couldn’t handle the whole social scene. Coming back, I was going to make sure that a difference was going to be made. I was going to go against the stereotypes, which is if you surf you’re going to be a tweaker, which is not the case. It has a big rebel image and I’m not sold on it, not at all. That’s all for marketing. Yes, maybe there are some rebels. There’s rebels in every sport. But it doesn’t have to be the main image. It’s a family sport. I know most people croak when I say that, but it is. It brings families together and keeps them together.”
How do you balance the trifecta of school, family and business ventures?
“Thank God they’re not all happening at once now. The kids are older, but of course they’re still coming around. I don’t feel the weight of being a mother like I used to at a younger age. School was really heavy before the summer season hits. I will say that in the whole off-season I’m busy, I’m really busy. I got all A’s last semester, 16 units at LMU. It was not easy.”
WHAT DO YOU LIKE AND DISLIKE MOST ABOUT SANTA MONICA?
“The most, I love the diversity I love the class diversity and ethnic diversity. The least is that it’s not homogenous, sometimes these classes, these differences, can have divisions, estrangement. Sometimes you see that, other than that, I love Santa Monica. I love the old Santa Monica. I remember coming down, it’s getting so gentrified, but some of the old charm is getting squeezed.”
WHY DO YOU CHOOSE SANTA MONICA FOR YOUR SURFING LESSONS?
“Santa Monica’s urban setting is right up to the water line and I can’t think of a better place to help release stress than to just walk out of hotel buildings and go straight into the sea. Santa Monica is just like L.A., it’s just a jump into the water. I love looking at the landscape after hitting a wave. It’s breathtak-ing, the view from the water.”
If you weren’t surfing and being involved in all the surfing ventures now, what would you be doing?
“I’d be doing something with water, that’s for sure. I’d be getting people to play, it’s a big place, it’s so therapeutic. I would probably be doing stuff like inner-city outreach work, social work,more with women than with men, that’s for sure. I do that anyway right now. I work with a lot of women. I’d be paddling out in the water on my board or something.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 31, 2006. Read the original PDF.