This year, Oceanside surfer Caitlin Simmers defends her world championship title. So far, she’s off to a great start.
Caitlin Simmers may be San Diego’s greatest homegrown athlete that people have never heard of. You’d think she’d be all over the San Diego news.
This 19-year-old surfer from Oceanside is the reigning 2024 world champion on the championship tour (CT). In other words, she’s the best female competitive surfer in the world.
Administered by the World Surf League, the CT represents the most elite level of professional surfing. It includes a men’s and women’s division featuring 11 contests held throughout the world, culminating in late fall with a finals day competition that determines the world champ for both divisions.
This year there’s more pressure on Simmers, as she defends her world title; surfers from the U.S., Australia, and Brazil would love to snatch it from her.
So far in 2025, she’s off to a great start after finishing in second place at the Lexus Pipe Pro and first place at the Surf Abu Dhabi Pro.
A 500-meter-long wave pool in the United Arab Emirates, Surf Abu Dhabi uses the same technology as Kelly Slater’s pool in Lemoore, CA.
The largest of its kind, it opened last October and earlier this month was already home to the second contest on this year’s CT.
(Wave pool contests are said to level the playing field, because they remove the unpredictability, the luck of the draw. Surfers know when the wave is coming, how big it’s going to be, and where it’s going to break. Still, some surfers and surfing spectators prefer the unpredictability that surfing “in the wild” brings.)
One thing that makes Simmers so dangerous is that she excels in big gnarly surf and in the smaller but more consistent waves that pools produce.
Based on her performance in the first two contests of the 2025 tour, Simmers is now ranked the #1 women’s surfer on the CT and it would seem unlikely for her not to finish in the top 5; it’s still early, though.
Simmers’ forte is her skating-infused nonchalance, an elegant casualness that she brings to the art of ripping a wave. Her five-foot-three frame is somehow able to generate bursts of speed and explosive energy that send her flying across the wave. She makes the sublime look easy, thanks in part to Oceanside skater and Tony Hawk protégé Chris Borst, who shapes many of her boards.
Many young surfers buckle under the pressure of expectations, a scenario Simmers, AKA “Oceanside’s pride and joy,” has thus far avoided. In 2021, she won the U.S. Open of Surfing as a 15-year-old. At that point, she could have joined the CT. Instead, wise beyond her years, she decided she wasn’t quite ready to jump out of the proverbial nest and spent the year with her family, free surfing and going to school.
In 2023, her rookie season on the CT, 17-year-old Simmers finished fifth in the world (I was there covering the contest for a San Diego news outlet); the following year, she would be crowned world champion on finals day at Lower Trestles, a hop, skip and a jump from her home in Oceanside.
While Simmers isn’t in the San Diego news a lot, the city is starting to take notice – she threw out the first pitch at a Padres game last year. Actually, she’s probably fine going under the radar as she’s not someone who seeks out the spotlight. Simmers is big on keeping it real and is no fan of forced, awkward interview banter when, as she points out, “I just like to get barreled.”
She’s all about keeping it simple, at least on the outside; not over-thinking or over-hyping it. Simmers knows she could never adequately put how it feels into words, and could sound really lame trying to describe the sensation of being catapulted out of a 12-foot grinding barrel.
That she doesn’t try shows how smart and how core she is.
A few other local pros deserve recognition. Encinitas’ Jake Marshall, who spends most of the year in Hawaii when he’s not traveling the CT circuit, finished 11th on the CT last year and is currently 13th in the world.
Also, since Mexico is next door, we’re keeping our eyes on rookies Alan Cleland, Jr. (whose dad was a well-known San Diego surfer), and Marco Mignot, since both CT rookies surf for Mexico. After the first two contests, Cleland is ranked 23rd in the world and Mignot 31st.
The third and next stop on the CT tour is Peniche, Portugal for the MEO Rip Curl Pro by Corona Cero. The contest window begins on March 15. Find more info at the website of the World Surf League.
Editor’s Note: They shred from their knees. Why San Diego’s little-known kneeboard community is stoked. Read about them HERE!
Read HERE about why San Diego’s surf community is no longer a “closed community,” for better or worse.
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