The kid is something else. Photo: WSL
Fifteen minutes into the quarterfinal of the EDP Ericeira Pro, Tya Zebrowski looked boxed in. The experienced and newly re-qualified Championship Tour surfer Isabella Nichols, had started with an eight, backed it up quickly and was in complete control.
Until, in the space of two minutes, she wasn’t. Zebrowski was back in the heat with two quick, powerful, vicious forehand arcs. Then, paddling back out, she snavelled a wider set, unleashed two of what will become her trademark layback snaps, and finished with a clean, tail-high rotation on the inside. It was the only example of real progression performed by a female surfer all week. And it was done under pressure, to turn a heat. By a surfer who had turned 13 in March this year.
“I saw Tya (pronounced Tee-a) two years ago surfing down at Bells at a Grom Search event and recognized her obvious talent,” said the vanquished Nichols after their heat. “But her progress has blown my mind. She’s developed physically and the power in her surfing is unbelievable. Where she will take surfing is anyone’s guess.”
Zebrowski would eventually be beaten by the veteran Sally Fitzgibbons in the Final. In another remarkable stat, Fitzgibbons had surfed two years on the CT before Zebrowski was born. “It makes me even hungrier, and more determined to win a Final,” Zebrowski said afterwards, puncturing any thoughts that she would be resting on a breakthrough performance. “I’ve won three events on the QS and qualified for the Challenger Series for next year. The aim is the CT.”
It is only out of the water when Zebrowski’s age becomes apparent. She speaks in a squeaky, almost helium-inhaled pitch of the just-turned teenager she is. In between heats, she was helping her parents look after her two-year-old sister and younger brother; competitions are an all-consuming family affair.
Her father Gary is a Tahitian-born surfer turned professional snowboarder (“Yep, it’s a Cool Runnings scenario, but when you find your passion, you do whatever it takes,” he told me) who finished sixth in the halfpipe at the 2006 Olympics. Her mum, Caroline Béliard was born in France and a successful professional snowboarder. The family runs a surf school and yoga retreat out of Messanges, just to the north of Hossegor.
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Tya’s extreme youth is hard not to highlight, even if surfing has a history of female athletes breaking through at incredibly young ages. Carissa Moore, Caroline Marks, and Caity Simmers won their first open events at age 15. Erin Brooks won in Fiji this year at 17. Three-time world champion Tyler Wright might be the closest comparison; she was just 14 when she won her first CT as a wildcard. None were however as young or as advanced in surfing terms as Zebrowski. She is not only the best 13-year-old surfer on the planet right now, but she may also be the best 13-year-old surfing has seen.
That however has its potential problems. “I started competing when I was so young, and it was nowhere normal or sometimes healthy,” she told The Inertia. “So I learned some hard lessons at a young age.” She is on record that her formative teenage years and education were compromised by competing full-time, pushed by her father whose dreams and hopes coagulated with hers. Simmers, perhaps wary of similar issues, elected not to compete on the CT when she first qualified at 15. Three years later she was a World Champ.
Yet, all individuals are different. There is absolutely no doubt that Zebrowski’s surfing is at Challenger Series level, and possibly higher. Having wiped the floor with the best European surfers this summer, it would be madness to try and hold her back from competing and beating the best. In the water, she has matched her incredible talent with calmness and maturity in terms of heat strategy. She has her family unit as her traveling team, and most importantly, the drive and hunger to succeed.
The Challenger Series will be a step up next year, but she proved in Portugal that not only can she handle the upgrade but can prosper. Given the rapid improvement you can expect from someone so young, it would be no surprise if she is surfing on the CT in 2026. In Portugal, she showed that surfing has, suddenly, a once-in-a-generation surfer. As Nichols said, where she takes it is really up to her.
