Ingrid Matta is a soul surfer you might not pick out of a crowd.
The Merritt Island resident who is pushing 50, although no one would ever know it, spent the past 20 some odd years as a Major in the Air Force and then as an Associate Vice President of Community Relations and Marketing at Brevard Community College. She is now a college English instructor.
She is the picture of a calm, cool and collected military woman or college professor. She is grace. She is class.
She is a lifelong surfer.
“I started surfing at age 11 in Indian Harbor Beach,” she says. “My older brother started, and I followed suit. My mother loved the beach so took us nearly daily, and we all took up surfing while she sunned herself.”
Although gals in the water are something of a phenom now-a-days, when Matta started out, she was actually shunned.
“My brothers were ashamed of me, a girl, surfing next to them. So I'd walk south from 1st Light to 2nd Light and pretty much be by myself, and save my brothers the humiliation. It wasn't a cool thing for a girl to do back then,” she says. “I was actually one of the early surfers to have frequented 2nd light, when 1st light was more popular.
Matta traded 14 years of classical ballet classes for a surfboard, much to the annoyance of her mom and many of the boys at school.
“Women surfing these days are quite the media craze. It's odd in a way because it used to be very unfashionable. In fact, I couldn't get a date because I was such an avid surfer, and surfed like a guy. Guys generally didn't like that at all. Now in the line up I'm very surprised at the more favorable comments from the guys. I think they are accepting that it's a wonderful, beautiful sport not the exclusive domain of guys. After all, it's really a personal expression like dancing, at least for me.”
Matta is happy that the stereotypes have lifted but worries that pop culture encourages women, and men, to think anyone can hop on a board and surf the day away.
“The media have made it into something anyone can do,” she says. “I see the results of this on the big, tough days, and these people are struggling and putting their lives in danger. It can be a very challenging and dangerous sport if not taken seriously. I guess I wouldn't discourage anyone from trying, no matter what the age. But being in good shape, and knowing the ocean is a definite must.”
Matta did find a guy who was man enough to surf alongside his wife. Her oldest daughter also surfs and she expects her 6-year-old to join them in the pond any day.
She is extremely careful about getting the girls in the water though and checks out the surf herself first: looking for water clarity, undertow, rip currents, and Spanish Mackerel.
“If there's the smell of that fish in the water then sharks are likely in the area,” she explains. “I teach my girls to listen, smell, and read the ocean and its personality before they ever get on a board. It's more than hanging ten. And then there's the courtesy thing which is big. There's a protocol out there beyond the breakers.”
Having now surfed Costa Rica, both the Caribbean and Pacific Coasts, and with plans to hit Fiji, and Indonesia, Matta prefers the local breaks and those in Hawaii.
“My number one surf heroine was Rell Sun, a wonderful Hawaiian surfer who embodied the spirit of the sport for me. I actually surfed with her in 1983 at Makaha, Hawaii a few years before she succumbed to cancer. She had a giving and loving spirit and believed the waves were there to bring us all together in peace and harmony. I kind of feel that way too, and it's something peaceful, lovely, and next to nature in its most dramatic and powerful form.”
Matta, an artist, loves the affect of light on the waves and the constant changes and notes how the ocean has a forever changing personality, from color to shape, to sound, to smell.
“It's a wonder even when the waves aren't too good,” she laughs. “And when the waves are good, and I'm out there with friends I've known my whole life, and with whom I share some big-surf memories, it just doesn't get any better. There's no place I'd rather be -except with my girls.”
For Matta, surfing is dancing on waves.
“It's also a way to reconnect with the circle of life,” she says. “It's not something I'd want to live without, and I plan to surf until I can no longer walk or feed myself.”