“I feel like when I surf, my mind goes quiet,” 16-year-old Jordan van Eek tells me.
This, I suspect, is good for the young Stirling High School scholar because she must have a very busy mind.
If she is not number one in her grade, then she is in the top 10. And she likes to be there, so she is inclined to keep her head down when it is time to work.
In grade 10 now, Jordan has chosen meaningful subjects: English, Afrikaans, Pure Maths, Physics, Biology and Geography.
When I arrived to interview the teenager for this column, her maths and physics books were open on the desk.
Not because she has a test coming up but because she wants to keep on top of her studies.
With some of her other sports, Jordan says, she can sometimes find herself asking, “Do I really want to do this?”
Like when it is time to get out of bed and swim lengths in the pool for water polo.
“But for surfing, I always want to go out,” she said.
A typical blue mind, Jordan is happiest when she is near the sea.
Blue mind, by the way, is “a psychological and neurological concept, popularised by Dr Wallace J Nichols, describing a mildly meditative state of calm, peace and creativity experienced when near, in, on or under water.
“This state reduces stress hormones (cortisol) while increasing feel-good neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin.
“Red mind by contrast is the anxious, overstimulated and stressed state often experienced in daily life.” Source: AI.
Jordan is disciplined, motivated and self-driven.
No surprise then that Zoe Steyn is her favourite local surfer.
Zoe and Jordan are both goofy-foot surfers, surfing with their right foot forward, and Zoe is Ms Hard Work personified.
Neither of these two young ladies expect any good results to land in their laps just because.
Jordan does some running and skateboarding for her cross-training.
In truth, she is not that fired up about contest surfing but is attracted to free surfing and just wants to be the best surfer that she can be while meeting people, making friends and having a good time.
“Jordan is a sea spirit, oops I mean free spirit,” says her mom Tammy, the slip of her tongue being more accurate than might have been intended.
She started surfing at age five and began competition surfing at 11.
She took her foot off the gas on her surfing for a while to favour water polo but has recently found surfing rising to the top again as her ideal, first-choice pastime.
Kwelera/Yellow Sands is her best break and going out surfing with her dad, Ivan, is a regular highlight.
Jordan’s love of the waves is not easily dampened.
A time ago, she was stung on the back of her knee and thigh by a Portuguese-man-of-war that burnt a dark whiplash on her leg that left her dizzy and seeing stars and with a meaningful scar.
Scars are medals, I told her. By the big smile on her face, you can tell that the colossal sting is not vaguely going to keep her out of the water.
For Jordan, surfing competition is just a byproduct of being at the beach with all her friends and having fun, so she took part in the Junior Summer Surf Series and was selected to be in the Buffalo City Grom Games team.
The grom games is a highly effective Nelson Mandela Bay/Buffalo City entry level surfing competition serving as a feeder system into provincial and SA surfing.
There is no shortage of green and gold surfing blazers today that first cut their teeth at the grom games.
Our Buffalo City grom games team is very ably administered by local provincial surfing.
Athletes in the recent Discovery Surfers Challenge might be pleased to know that their hard-sweat entry fees contribute to grom selection and grassroots support for surfing at entry level.
In recent times, Buffalo City has dominated the SA surfing scene at Junior, Open and Masters level.
Not to be left out, at this last weekend’s Sea Harvest Grom Games, Buffalo City annihilated their EP opposition with a gigantic 47,380 points. Nelson Mandela Bay limped home with 20,859 points.
Showing her class, Jordan won her U16 girls division. The other Buffalo City champions in this event were U8 Boys: Griffin Enslin; U12 Girls: Nicole Eleftheriou; U14 Boys: Luke Pederson-Horn; U14 Girls: Priya Tese and U16 Boys: Kai Hare.
Buffalo City dominated the runner-up positions to convincingly overwhelm their Bay opponents.
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