About a week before the start of the women’s Lexus Pipe Pro at Pipeline, then 17-year-old Sunny Kazama sent a text.
She needed a letter of recommendation for the prestigious Duke Award, a scholarship of up to $15,000 annually given to a Hawaii high school senior who embodies the spirit of Duke Kahanamoku, the father of modern surfing. Sunny’s idol, five-time World Surf League champion and inaugural Olympic women’s surfing gold medalist Carissa Moore, had already offered to recommend her when need be.
As Moore, 31, readied for her last career competition in Hawaii as a Honolulu native and Punahou alumna, need be arrived. Sunny’s dad, Davin, did not think it realistic for them to see said letter anytime soon.
Six thoughtful paragraphs arrived the next day, Feb. 1, promptly at 12:38 p.m.
Sanoe, or Sunny, as most call her, is a ray of sunshine in human form. … I first met Sunny in 2019 when she took part in one of my very first Moore Aloha events. … She is one in a million and will undoubtedly contribute positively to any program or institution she chooses to be a part of. … Sincerely, Carissa Moore.
“This is like if Michael Jordan was super cool, and if Michael Jordan gave all of his time,” Davin said. “I’m not saying Michael Jordan is not a good guy. … No one (of that stature) does this. It’s just Carissa, you know.”
Moore’s favorite quote is telling. Credited to iconic author and civil rights activist Maya Angelou, it reads, “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
When the second-ever shortboard Summer Olympics surfing event concludes on Aug. 5, so will Moore’s athletic career for the foreseeable future.
She announced her retirement plans on social media in January and reportedly intends to start a family with husband Luke Untermann, per The New York Times. Whether or not she repeats as the reigning women’s gold medalist, many may better remember, decades from now, the interactions they shared at various local shore breaks where she served as an ambassador for the sport and, more specifically, for a budding community of young Hawaii female surfers in a historically male-dominated space.
Before Moore founded the Moore Aloha Charitable Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the health and wellness of young women and girls through surfing, she won three WSL Championships. Winning, though rewarding in and of itself, left a lot to be desired. She wanted her impact to exist beyond the jerseys she wore and the trophies she won.
“You compete on a tour all year long to win a world title, but then only a few months later, it presses reset and then you do it all over again,” Moore said. “When I won my first world title, I was like, ‘Wow, this is it?’ I thought the skies would part and something totally different would change and happen.”
She decided to do as much herself, the best way she knew how.
Being among others lifted her spirits as much as it did them through what she described as a struggle personally and professionally due to a diminishing sense of purpose.
Since 2018, Moore Aloha has annually hosted 3-4 community events. In December, the organization welcomed a cohort of 14 Japanese students to surf sessions and myriad other cultural excursions as part of an inaugural Japan-U.S. Global Exchange program with the cities of Makinohara and Shimoda. This November, just as many Hawaii students will visit Japan — the site of her gold-medal surf — via the same Olympic Legacy initiative.
“There’s so many more girls at the lineup that she frequents at Kewalo Basin (Honolulu), but just all around the island and around the world, there’s just so many more females doing the sport,” said Chris, Moore’s dad. “It’s not Carissa singularly (impacting) that but it’s nice to know that she has a part in it.”
A Timeless Legacy
Moore understood the “pay it forward” concept well. Moore Aloha was her way of displaying such selflessness for the next generation to follow suit. Sunny got the memo.
Ahead of the 2021-22 school year, the Hawaii Surfing Association (HSA), a non-profit, found itself in financial strife. Layoffs occurred. Funds dissipated. And all of the above spelled danger for a high school season set to feature surfers from about a half dozen schools in the Interscholastic League of Honolulu and Oahu Interscholastic Association, respectively, including Sunny at ‘Iolani. With surfing ineligible to be a sanctioned sport under the Hawaii High School Athletic Association bylaws, student surfers would’ve been stripped of an opportunity to represent their schools.
When Sunny and her younger sister, Maia, debuted their “Save Our Season” fundraiser in response, they hoped to pull together at least a portion of the necessary funds.
Upwards of $67,000 worth of donations, funneled directly to the HSA, were raised with the help of at least 16 different companies as of November 2023. The Nike N7 Fund, built to support indigenous communities, ultimately made a $50,000 commitment after two $25,000 installments within a four-month span in 2023.
Sunny set out to preserve one season and secured the short-term future of surfing in Hawaii instead. She turned 18 in April.
“I was like, ‘OK, $1,000, I’m not sure if that’s going to cover the whole cost but if I can just give them something, that’s better than nothing,’” Sunny said. “And then we actually ended up getting the whole cost and a little more … a lot more.”
Numerous local businesses, some of whom Sunny personally pitched on the situation, pledged support. Many HSA t-shirts were sold. The small donations started to stack up. Then Moore caught wind of the fundraiser. She swiftly provided a signed jersey and her 2021 Lexus Pipe Pro plaque for a raffle, unprompted by Sunny. Returns amounted to more than $5,125.
“I can’t really believe that happened,” Sunny said.
With alternative financing taken care of in the short term, Sunny pivoted to age-old red tape that has buffered surfing from being an officially recognized sport by the HHSAA.
Although the Hawaii State Department of Education approved it as a high school sport in 2004, only one of the five local interscholastic athletic leagues, the Maui Interscholastic League, has established the requisite funding two decades later. HHSAA bylines indicate that at least three leagues need to carry the sport for a state tournament to be held.
Again, Sunny mobilized, this time to help stir momentum behind a state bill created in the House of Representatives (HB500) for which different versions have since been passed in the House and Senate. Generally, it’s meant to appropriate more funds to better support surfing in Hawaii. A petition Sunny released in collaboration with the Outrigger Duke Kahanamoku Foundation has received 447 signatures in support of the bill.
A number of steps still remain before the bill may be written into law, including but not limited to a further review by House and Senate conferees, or in other words, the representatives assigned by the respective houses to discuss a compromise between their distinct versions of the bill.
But what’s another day, another week or even another month of waiting, especially after decades of perceived inaction?
“It’s so overdue,” Sunny said.
For all of the traceable steps that Sunny has taken to make a pragmatic difference in the Hawaii high school surfing community, how she has so warmly treated others along the way has made Moore most proud. Moore said Sunny, with her bold, bright smile and equally energizing personality, can make any given person feel as if they are the only person in the room.
Sunny saw Moore in that same light the first time they first met, long before the 2019 first meeting Moore referenced in her recommendation. She may not remember.
They were at Huntington Beach. Moore was in the middle of heats for the U.S. Open of Surfing. Sunny said she might’ve been a toddler at the time, perhaps too young to recall the exact year. And yet, everything else about the encounter is as vividly clear to her now as it was then.
Angelou wrote something about that once.
“That was a really long time ago,” Sunny said.
“I just remember she was super cheery, she’s like, ‘Oh, hey, let’s take a photo.’ She was super kind, even though the competition is super high pressure. She was very gracious.”