HALEIWA, Hawaii — Twenty years ago, Keala Kennelly donned a competition jersey and paddled out to the celebrated waves of Pipeline on the North Shore of Oahu, the heart of surfing’s seven-mile mecca.
It turns out, she was surfing in the future.
Back then, women surfing Pipeline, a reef break producing huge waves, stuck out like sore thumbs. There had been women who took to the break in previous decades — Joyce Hoffman and Jodie Cooper among them — but Kennelly was still one of few. There were no major competitions for professional female surfers at Pipeline.