Quick Take
Girl Grom Surf Club brings girls ages 6 to 16 together for free monthly surf sessions at Capitola Beach, helping them build skills, confidence and friendships in a sport where they often feel outnumbered. Founded in San Diego in 2024, the nonprofit now has four California chapters and aims to foster confidence and stronger mental health through surfing.
The Capitola Beach surf break fills with girls sporting bright orange pinnies and colorful surfboards every month. The girls, ages 6 to 16, are part of the Santa Cruz chapter of Girl Grom Surf Club, a nonprofit that aims to build confidence in the water and foster a community of young female surfers.
On Sept. 25, about 15 girls gathered in a circle at the start of the fourth session of the Santa Cruz Girl Grom club to share their favorite part of the ocean and listen to safety tips before putting on their wetsuits.
“It’s fun to just go surfing, but sometimes when it’s big, it can be scary,” said Genevieve Jones, 10. “But if you have a bunch of other people around you, it’s a bit less scary and more fun.”
Grom is a board-sports term for a young surfer or other young action-sports enthusiast. Shawna Baruh started the Santa Cruz chapter of Girl Grom Surf Club in June because her daughter, Emma Baruh, 11, was interested in surfing but didn’t want to go out to the break without friends.
“I love it so much ’cause we’re bonding with girls,” Emma said of Girl Grom. “At my school, there’s not a lot of people, so I’m making a lot more friends.”
Shawna Baruh, a surfer herself, moved to Santa Cruz a few years ago from San Diego and noticed that a lot of the breaks in the area were intimidating and male-dominated.
“If you go to an actual good surf spot, it will be mostly men,” she said. “That’s scary.”
Catherine Handschuh, Genevieve’s mom, helped Baruh get the Santa Cruz chapter started because she saw an opportunity in the community she’s lived in for the past two decades: helping girls feel more comfortable in the water.
“The need is to get girls out there en masse,” Handschuh said.
Girl Grom Surf Club was founded in 2024 in San Diego by Sarah Freeman and her 9-year-old daughter, Eveley. Eveley, now 11, recognized the same problem Baruh and Handschuh identified at her home surf break: Girls weren’t making it out to surf.
“Girls getting cast to the outside was definitely a big [problem],” Eveley said. “Everybody should be welcome in the lineup.”
Girl Grom started as a casual meetup for Eveley to make some surfing friends. “ My son had created the logo and was just kinda helping his sister with this fun little project that we thought it was,” Sarah Freeman said.
A year after Girl Grom started, Freeman’s son, who struggled with mental health, passed away. The loss became a turning point for the organization. The Freemans registered Girl Grom as an official nonprofit with a broader mission: fostering strong mental health.
“We were realizing as the girls were coming together and forming these friendships, it was more than just making girls surf friends. They were really creating confidence and… overcoming fears and trying something new,” Freeman said. “It just became clear that this is what we want to really give to the girls and provide a space for.”
“It was basically a given,” Eveley Freeman added.
Girl Grom Surf Club celebrated its first year as a nonprofit in August. The organization has four chapters across California, including Santa Cruz, and brings together more than 1,500 girls a year for free monthly surf meetups, according to Sarah Freeman. The other three are in San Clemente, North San Diego and Encinitas.
The Santa Cruz chapter of Girl Grom Surf Club meets every month at Capitola Beach.
Despite Santa Cruz County’s deep surf history, Girl Grom is the area’s first free surf group focused on girls.
London Lorber, a competitive junior surfer and sophomore at Soquel High School, has been surfing for five years and said she’s never seen anything like the club.
Lorber surfs almost every day at Pleasure Point and notices she is frequently one out of five girls at the break out of around 20 total surfers – “It’s not comforting,” she said.
Lorber’s observation aligns with a national statistic – a 2024 Surf Industry Members Association study found that females make up 35% of the total surfing population in the United States.
Lorber visited the Santa Cruz Girl Grom chapter to help the girls in the water. She made a lasting impression on Genevieve and Emma, who both mentioned that meeting Lorber was one of their favorite memories from the club.
Shawna Baruh recognizes that support can make a difference in helping girls get out and surf in Santa Cruz, which is why she started a Girl Grom chapter in the area.
“If the girls come here and have a community, and they are kind of growing up in this space we’ve created that’s safe, they’re gonna have that confidence … to go and enter those places that might be a little bit more tricky to surf,” Baruh said. “We just want to give them the confidence to feel like they belong there, too.”
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