At Santa Cruz's Club Ed, novice surfers start their endless summer with big dreams and wise coaching

Fae Dai, 26, of Kansas City, Mo., is videotaped by Club Ed's Mike DeGregorio.

San Jose Mercury News, July 31, 1997 by Deb Hopewell

On a recent weekday morning, all kinds of sleepy dreamers had crawled out of their tents to eat breakfast, huddled around their fire pit at Manresa Uplands campground, trying to absorb as much warmth as they could before the first chilly go-out of the day.

Guzman has been playing harmonica almost as long as he has been surfing-so at night, his campers hear the blues whether they want to or not.

Jason, 14, and his 12-year-old brother, Sean, had returned this year from Fort Lauderdale. Fae, a 26-year-old telecommunications engineer from Kansas City, Mo., explained in halting English that she'd found Club Ed on the Web; so had Quin, a skinny 24-year-old on leave from the Army in upstate New York. Samantha, a fresh-faced 16-year-old who attends Sacred Heart High School in San Francisco, has already been surfing for a few months.

Seventeen-year-old Juan arrived from Barcelona, Spain, demonstrating a promising natural ability. Jason from Montreal, 15, had e-mailed before his arrival inquiring if it was OK for him to smoke (it's discouraged; Jason wasn't). Michael, 21, is a recent University of Michigan grad who is bound for Los Angeles and a career as an investment banker.

With the help of two full-time indefatigable instructors, Guzman sets about teaching each and every one of them the rudiments of surfing - and that's just for starters.

"I want to motivate them and open their eyes to what's available to them," says Guzman, 39, who has operated the surf camp for four years, and taught surfing for years before that. At the University of California, Santa Cruz, he has taught surfing and windsurfing programs since 1991 (they call him "The Professor of Surf"), and does the same for the city of Capitola.

Using soft "foamie" surfboards made out of boogie-board-type material, Guzman and his instructors (whom he trains himself) help the beginners paddle out from the beach and into their first waves. The boards, 8½ to 9½ feet and designed by Guzman himself, are long enough to get novices into the wave easily. As I've gotten into being a surf coach and nothing else in the last seven years," he says, "I've really concentrated on how people can get the most fun in the least amount of time."

But anyone who has surfed just a little knows there's much more to the endeavor than putting a board in the water, pointing it into a wave and standing up. Students also are instructed in how different boards work, and why; how to read ocean conditions (a lifelong process); and, just as important, how to read the crowd in the lineup.

"It's like being on the road. If you don't flow right with the traffic, there's going to be a problem with people and the ocean," says Guzman. "There is a pace. And if you get yourself in the rhythm, and paddle around the lineup instead of through it, people are grateful. You'll make more friends than enemies, and when your turn comes people will acknowledge you and let you ride your wave.

"Better manners really bring out the best in people. And if you're clueless, people will try to teach you a lesson."

Guzman would prefer his wards learn that lesson from him, instead of at the hands of those who can be less merciful.

Nonetheless, there is the occasional disgruntled surfer who lets Guzman know that he (or she) doesn't appreciate him bringing more beginners into the already crowded waters.

At that point, he says, "I address the issue. I explain to them that I'm teaching my students the rules, teaching them safety aspects instead of having people go out without guidance. What I'm able to do is educate beginners, and make them safer earlier in the game."

Guzman was 12 years old when he started surfing, and he remembers clearly how it felt to be a stoked gremmie. "A friend of mine went on a vacation to Hawaii, and he came back with a surfboard. He was my best friend. He said, 'Ed, you gotta do this. It's the coolest thing ever.'" They went down to Cowell Beach in Santa Cruz, where Guzman surfed for the first time and where, years later, he would open is surf concession.

Three years later, Guzman's mother moved her three kids to Salinas to get them away from the drugs and violence of city life. On the way there, she stopped and bought him a board at Doug Haut's shop, and a brand-new wetsuit at O'Neills ("she wanted me to be warm and safe"). Before long, he was driving to Moss Landing, surfing nearly every day and paying his dues.

"The group there was a very scrutinous bunch," Guzman says. "My nickname was Kookless. And the name stuck. I worked really hard to outlive that name, but no matter how hard I tried, they still called me that." Over time the surfing sobriquet faded away, but not the memory of what it was like being the new guy in the lineup.

"People are coming to me for their first-time experience, and it's a scary thing to trust someone, to have a physically and emotionally safe experience," says Guzman. "I realize what a responsibility that is, and I'm very honored to be put in the position of people trusting me like that."

After four years in the Navy (where he was allowed to bring three surfboards with him aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise and surfed Hawaii, the Philippines and Australia), Guzman landed a job at Fort Ord in 1982 as the program director of outdoor recreation. Among other things, he taught active and retired military, and their families, how to surf. Again, not a popular notion among some of the Monterey Bay locals.

"There's always been a controversy around me doing this," says Guzman, who steadfastly defends everyone's right to surf and enjoy the ocean. "Now those same guys are bringing their kids up to me at Cowell Beach and asking me to teach them. It's funny how things come around full circle."