Founder, North Shore Surf Girls. First woman to compete at Banzai Pipeline (1986). Morey World Bodyboarding Vice Champion (1993).
Carol Philips is a Hawaiʻi-born surfer, community leader, and women-in-sport pioneer. In 1986 she became the first woman to compete in a professional men’s contest at Banzai Pipeline on Oʻahu’s North Shore — a watershed moment in women’s surfing.
Today she is President of the North Shore Chamber of Commerce and was a past Chair of the Hawaiʻi State Commission on the Status of Women, and continues to teach through her surf school in Haleʻiwa.
Carol Philips is a Pipeline pioneer, contest founder, and the founder & head coach of North Shore Surf Girls, a surf school based in Haleʻiwa on Oʻahu’s North Shore. She has lived, surfed, taught, and run events on this stretch of coast for more than three decades. Every lesson her team teaches is rooted in that experience.
In 1986, Carol became the first woman to compete against the men at the Banzai Pipeline. The discipline was bodyboarding — at that point in surfing history, women did not yet compete at Pipeline in any discipline, and there was no women’s draw. Carol surfed in the men’s event. Bodyboarding was the door, and Carol walked through it first.
Pipeline is widely considered the most consequential wave in surfing. Being the first woman to compete there — against the men, no less — is a permanent line in the sport’s history. The claim is documented on Carol’s Wikipedia page.
Carol’s career has been documented across surf and mainstream media. Highlights:
To run a sanctioned contest at the Banzai Pipeline, you need a contest permit from the City and County of Honolulu. In 1990, at age 23, Carol became the first woman ever to hold a Pipeline contest permit — and the youngest person of any gender to do so. Both records still stand as part of Pipeline’s contest history.
In 2005, Carol founded North Shore Surf Girls in Haleʻiwa as a female-founded surf school designed to make Oʻahu’s North Shore accessible to first-time surfers — including men, women, couples, families, mixed groups, and corporate retreats. The instructor team today includes both women and men, all locally based, all certified, all hand-selected by Carol.
Carol’s competitive and contest-management experience translates directly into how North Shore Surf Girls runs lessons:
Carol was featured in the film Blue Crush (Universal Pictures, 2002) and in the book North Shore Chronicles.
In 2005, Carol was appointed by the Governor of Hawaiʻi to a four-year term on the Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women.
Carol Anne Philips (born 1966) is a pioneer of big-wave bodyboarding for women, the founder of the World Championship of Women’s Bodyboarding at the Banzai Pipeline (1990), and the founder of North Shore Surf Girls in Haleʻiwa, Oʻahu. She is documented on Wikipedia.
Carol was the first woman to compete at the Banzai Pipeline — and she did it against the men. That contest, in 1986, was a bodyboarding event. At the time, women did not yet compete at Pipeline in any discipline; there was no women’s draw, so she entered the men’s event.
Founded by Carol Philips at the Banzai Pipeline in 1990 in memory of Don and Josie Over, the World Championship of Women’s Bodyboarding was the first world-championship-level competition for women’s bodyboarding. It was later sanctioned in the mid-1990s by the International Surfing Association (ISA), the IOC-recognized world governing body of surfing.
Yes — Carol was United States Champion in Women’s Bodyboarding in 1989 and 1991, Hawaiʻi State Champion in 1990 and 1999, and Vice Champion of the Morey World Championships in 1993.
Carol runs and oversees North Shore Surf Girls and hand-selects every instructor on the team. Day-to-day lessons are taught by her certified instructor team at Puaʻena Point, Chun’s Reef, and other beginner-appropriate North Shore breaks.
Want a lesson rooted in 35+ years of North Shore experience? Book a surf lesson with North Shore Surf Girls →
Group, family, couples, corporate, and private lessons all available year-round. Contact us for custom requests, large groups, or media inquiries.
