Sage in Oakley HSTN Prizm Tungsten Lenses and Matte Carbon Frames. Photo: Oakley
Editor’s Note: This feature is presented by our partners at Oakley.
Surfing is all about WTF moments, from the first time you paddled out, to the last time you scored the wave of a lifetime. At The Inertia, we spend countless hours searching for people who’ve had that feeling, that extraordinary moment that makes you stop and think about how you even got there, and then leaves you with a new perspective on the world.
Over at Oakley, they’ve not only been looking for those moments, but finding ways to create them. Their Prizm Lens Technology is designed to dramatically enhance detail to provide ultra-precise color tuning for specific environments. When athletes put on a pair of Oakleys with Prizm tech, they get that classic WTF moment when they experience the world through their enhanced clarity.
To celebrate the launch of the WTF campaign, we couldn’t think of a better person to talk to than Sage Erickson, an Oakley ambassador and professional surfer who spent a decade on the Championship Tour.
Sage Erickson was born in Ojai, California, but didn’t start surfing until her family moved to Hawaii when she was nine. There, she paddled out for the first time at Sunset Beach and immediately fell in love. Five years later, they moved back to California and Sage cut her teeth on the legendary points of Santa Barbara.
After rising through the amateur and pro junior circuits, she went on the CT in 2012. Though she struggled in her early years of the tour, she came into her own in the 2016 season, landing third at Trestles and a few quarterfinal finishes to propel her to the top 10. Then things exploded in 2017 with her first CT win at the Vans US Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach, California.
Photo: Oakley
Lately, she’s been enjoying some time away from the tour, so we caught up with her during a trip to Mexico to ask about some of the WTF moments in her life.
First off, congratulations on getting engaged! How’s life changed since then?
One of my good friends, when we got engaged, they were like “Being engaged is the best part, because everyone is really nice to you.” They’re genuinely really excited about love, so that part has felt really special. In many parts of your life, people are really happy for you, but something about being engaged, people are really happy for you.
What else have you been up to?
I’m down in Mexico, just doing a strike mission. There’s a good south swell, the California water’s still cold and it’s just so easy to come down here and score waves. So I brought Willie, one of my best friends. He’s down here filming and we’re just going to make a fun Mexico edit and put it online. The intentions behind these trips is to surf as much as I can, try new boards, and just do what makes me happy, which is surfing and being on an adventure.
What other projects do you have going on for when you go back?
I have quite a few edits that I haven’t released. I did a fun Waco trip last year. I went to Australia for two weeks last month and filmed a ton. I’m getting ready to put some things out on YouTube and build out a channel more. Not being on the tour full time, I’m moving more into freesurfing and documenting the love of surfing. I just want to remind people how good surfing is and how fun being out in the water is and sneaking in those little moments along the way.
Do you like the lifestyle more than when you were traveling for tournaments?
It’s totally different. Being on tour was the best parts of my life up until this point. I got to travel the world with my best friends, compete, win, celebrate, go to these crazy locations and I think now is just a different stage of my life. I’m simplifying and enjoying the smaller moments, not the fast paced turnaround on the road. I can come to a place and live like the local people and experience it and that’s really special.
How’s your approach changed since you’ve been freesurfing?
I try different style boards. Being on tour is (all about) high performance shortboards. My fiancé just started shaping, so he’s been making me some really fun twin fins. That’s been really fun to just experience a different feeling on the wave. I don’t have an agenda or a checklist of what I need to do to feel productive, so I can just surf freely.
You also surf with your fiancé (Daniel Norris). Have you had a new perspective on it from seeing it through his eyes?
Definitely. Daniel is a professional baseball player, so he spends seven to eight months out of the water because he has to. Because he does that, when we have our off season together, he wants to surf every day. Coming from where I had to do it as a job, sometimes I’d be like, “Oh the waves don’t look very good, I don’t want to go out,” and he’d be like, “Hey, let’s just go out. There’s waves, it’s surfable.” He was just so stoked. That really helped me transitioning out of competing full time. I would be like “What’s the point? I’m not training for an event, I’m not gonna have a result.” He helped me with that perspective shift, that surfing is for fun and how amazing is this. He’s like a big grom, he just wants to surf and try new boards. Something that connected us is that love of surfing. Two athletes that are on the road eight to 10 months out of the year, it sounds crazy that we met, but surfing really started that first connection.
Sounds like you kind of got back that feeling that you often have when you first start off and you’re so excited. Do you feel you’re kind of like a grom again?
Yeah. It’s taken about a year and a half to two years to feel that entirely. I don’t have the pressure of being better than another female. As an athlete you’re always like “be better,” “do more,” “be relevant,” “get more photos,” “keep sponsors happy.” There’s a part of it that is a job and I think athletes hyper focus on that a little too hard and need to remember why we started. So this phase of my life is like being a kid again. It’s that youthful spirit. It’s that no matter what age, who you are, what you do, you’re allowed to surf and be out in the most magical place. It’s a really fun place to be.
So, how did you get involved in Oakley’s WTF campaign?
I’ve been an athlete for Oakley since I was 14. Oakley’s supported me my whole life, and the WTF campaign is so applicable to the brand and what we represent. The Prizm lens enhances colors and contrast and just gives this new definition to what you’re seeing. My house has a lot of fruit trees and grass and flowers and different colors, so they came and put me in the lens to see what my environment was like in a new way. Then we went and shot at the beach at my local spot and got to look through the lens at what that looked like. It was super amazing.
How would you define a WTF moment?
A WTF moment is just a moment of shock and pure bliss. For a long time I would always change lens colors, because they would make what I saw one color, but the Prizm is enhancing the color that is actually there. You see vibrancy, you see detail, you see dimension differently. It’s just a moment of bliss and you’re in shock.
A lot of people describe their first time surfing as a WTF moment. Was it the same thing of looking at the world in a new way when you first paddled out on Sunset Beach?
California has its own beauty, but the water is a darker color, the sand’s a darker color, the trees have a darker tone. Paddling out when I was first learning to surf in Hawai’i, it’s blue aqua water and yellow sand beaches. I think when you’re around an environment things just become one tone naturally, and there’s that excitement of when you first go to a place when you see it differently. I feel like with the Prizm lens, you can see your regular space in full color and fully for what it is, and that’s a WTF moment.
Another one was probably in 2017 when you got that first CT victory. How did you look at the world differently after that?
Winning that world tour event, that was really surreal in itself, just for my own confidence and self-belief. Everything that I’d been visualizing actually coming to reality. My manager’s phone just started ringing and ringing and that was really crazy. With those new sponsorships I was able to change the way that I trained, the places that I went and the equipment that I bought. My surfing kept raising to another level because it was affirming that what I’m working on is the right thing. Validation in my sport was a really big thing. Also I was really proud to represent my sponsors that had stood by me throughout my career. It was like “We did it!” Their support made something out of nothing.
What’s a memory of a trip you went on as part of the Oakley team?
Oakley supported me incredibly through all of my career. In my younger years, they took me on a lot of my first big surfing trips. The team manager at the time would bring a small, younger group of us to be around big events. They took me to the Gold Coast for the first time when the Snapper CT was around, put us in the nicest hotel which all of us had never stayed in. We got to meet all the pros that rode for Oakley. We got to freesurf with all of them before the events and I think the whole point was that we could see what we could be. You could tangibly see that here are these people that made a career out of surfing. I was also a big part of the Oakley learn to ride events where we taught celebrities how to surf. I taught Mario Lopez, Good Charlotte, all these really cool people. When you have braces and you’re teaching Good Charlotte how to surf you’re like “What is going on?” Oakley’s taken me to so, so many places. Literally every dream scenario they’ve helped me be a part of or made it happen. The best memories and some of the most foundational memories of my life have been through Oakley taking me to these places.
