Marin girls build skills at skateboarding, surfing camp
Confidence, balance and a ticket to the same joys found in the male-dominated skateboard and surfing network are among the gifts of a girls-only summer camp in Marin.
“It’s really fun,” said Emy Henson, 13, of Lucas Valley. “I love it. Just going from not knowing how to skate at all to being able to skate.”
Emy was among the students who participated in a camp this month in the skateboard area at Memorial Park in San Anselmo. The weeklong camp repeats through the end of the summer
The camp is run by Ladies Shred, a skateboard and surfing coaching business founded by Lilja Merrill of Sausalito in 2013. Merrill, 28, started the camp program in 2015.
The $500-per-week session includes four, six-hour days Mondays through Thursdays alternating entry-level surfing and skateboard lessons for girls ages 7 through 14. The lessons take place at different skateparks and beaches throughout Marin. On Fridays, the girls get to be creative with a day of art classes.
Merrill, who graduated from Redwood High School in Larkspur in 2012, said she got hooked on surfing and skateboard during her last year in high school.
“I got the bug,” she said. “I did it every single day, after school, before school, on the weekends.”
Merrill got a job at Proof Lab surf shop in Tam Junction, where she started “girls’ skate night” on Wednesdays.
Merrill said the event, which is still happening 10 years later, was her way of trying to find other female skateboarders as friends to join her. Instead, what she discovered was a steady stream of girls who wanted to learn how to skate. Merrill began her business, offering lessons and coaching, to respond to all the requests.
Skateboarder Ava Louise of Sausalito, who helps Merrill at the summer camp, got hooked on skateboarding about eight years ago.
“My mom hired Lilja for a private lesson when I was about 11,” said Louise, 19. “And then I found out about ‘girls’ skate night,'” she said.
“After that, I started going every week, and I got really into it,” she said. “There was such a great community of skater chicks that were so supportive.”
This is Louise’s second summer working with Merrill’s camp.
“All the girls are just so much fun to be around,” Louise said. “To watch them learn so fast, going from barely knowing how to get on a skateboard to doing kick-turns in a week.”
Eleven-year-old Emily May of Lagunitas said she had previously taken one other skateboarding lesson, but “this is the best one that I’ve had,” she said.
“Lil teaches it step by step, so it’s nice to have someone not go from big to small, but to go from small to big,” Emily said.
On a recent Wednesday, Emily was working on “fakeys,” moves in which a skater rides the board slightly up the ramp and builds momentum to push back the other way. She was also practicing “360s,” or the equivalent of kick-turns in lap swimming.
Claire Crockett of Mill Valley was introduced informally to skateboarding by her uncle in Iowa. The Marin camp was her first time standing up on the board and practicing moves, she said.
“You get to learn a lot of balance,” said Claire, 9. “And you get to learn a lot of cool tricks.”
She said skateboarding “is not about being cool” but it’s about learning the mastery and joy of balancing and moving on a board.
Claire said she also enjoyed the surfing lessons, which take place at a private beach in Bolinas.
“I used to be so scared of surfing when I was a little kid,” she said. “Now it’s super fun.”
Louise, a student at the College of Marin, said young girls just starting skateboarding should stay with other girls until they can gain enough confidence.
“To go to a skatepark and be the only girl there, and it’s full of boys who are already really good and really confident on the board and just, like, flying past you, it’s really intimidating,” she said.
“It’s really helpful to have a community of girl skaters who are really supportive, to help you learn in a really comfortable environment,” she said. “That’s really important for young girls to have that.”