![]() And by the time she was a junior, she helped create a women’s team. She said the college wanted her presence on the team to garner interest from women. They were like, ‘Oh my gosh, how could you be on a men’s swim team?’ I grew up swimming with the boys.” “It wasn’t weird to me,” she said, “but college kids thought it was weird. Title IX, a 1972 federal civil rights law that protects students from gender discrimination, had not yet been passed. She also said that she taught the neighborhood girls - family friends - how to swim, because she wanted to keep her father’s mission alive.īeth attended Bethany College in West Virginia, where she was part of a men’s swim team because a women’s team didn’t exist. “It’s really fun to work together like that.” “You could try, and the next thing you know you’re part of the surf culture, because you’ve fallen in love with riding the waves,” she said.īeth also helped launch Skudin Swim last year, a program at Nickerson Beach that trains, manages and hires lifeguards throughout Nassau County. These days, she coaches swimming at the Long Beach Recreation Center - something she’s been doing on and off since 2009, although she’s been teaching swimming and surfing for about 40 years. But Beth said she always returns to Long Beach. The Skudins have lived in some of the most famous surf spots around the world, including Hawaii and North Carolina. Both run Skudin Surf, and co-founded Surf for All, a non-profit that organizes surf outings and events for people with physical and developmental disabilities, as well as war veterans and disadvantaged youth. Will is a professional big-wave surfer competing in the elite Big Wave World Tour, while Cliff is working his way up as a pro and competed in many big-wave contests. They continued her father’s tradition and shared their love for the sport and culture with their four sons, Dave, Cliff, Will and Woody. For three generations, they have been surfing, swimming, teaching and working as lifeguards on Long Island.īeth, 63, and her husband, Dave, surfed together as children with Beth’s father, Dick Bolton, a former surfer, artist and Jones Beach lifeguard. She described herself as the “resident mom” at Skudin Surf, the popular surfing school in Long Beach, with locations in Rockaway, Nickerson and Tobay beaches.įor the Skudins, surfing is a family affair. ![]() “It doesn’t feel like work.īeth is known as the matriarch of the Long Beach surfing community. “I always love to be in the water,” Beth Skudin said, her bathing suit still wet under her cover-up. Beth Skudin, matriarch of the surfing community ![]()
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