On January 15th, 2010 South Kingstown's Sue Lloyd Hogan was inducted into the East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame in a ceremony held at the Orlando Convention Center in Central Florida. It had been a long time coming.

Susan was very fortunate to have had a family that lived close to the Narragansett Town Beach and parents who supported her obsession with the sport. They bought her and her sister their first surfboard in the summer of 1964. She had already had a season of surfing under her belt borrowing boards the previous summer. "I caught the bug in the 7th grade when I was 13 years old," said Sue in an interview this past week.

"My parents took me and my sister to the Gob Shop in Wakefield (current location of Town Meats) and bought me a Velzy 9'4" stock single fin that seemed to weight 100 pounds. I spent the first couple of summers surfing with Charlie Johnson, Pat McNulty, and Frankie Garceau. I was the only girl surfing in Narragansett during those first years."

Susan became the first female athlete in Rhode Island to be asked to join a nationally sponsored surf team when she signed on with the Surfboards Hawaii Team.  She quickly became a force to be reckoned with on the highly competitve Northeast contest circuit. Although this was truly the heyday of surfing competition only a small handful of female surfers had the ability and physical capabilty to handle the big heavy longboards of that era.

She won or placed in just about every major contest in the northeast during the mid-60's competing against the likes of Florence French, Donna Johnson, Janice Chronley, Karen and Kathy Adams, Liz Herd, Stephanie Katz, and Donna Snodgrass.

In the early 1970's, there were no professional contests. The Eastern Surfing Association hosted the big events and the surfers who placed at the Eastern Championships were considered the professionals of that era. Most of the top surfers who competed and won at the ESA events of that era are now members of the East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame.

After taking a year off from competition, Sue again went undefeated in New England contests and was invited to the 1979 East Coast Championships to represent the area. Again there were big waves for the event but the field of competitors were completely different. Surfing against a new group of hot women competitors, Sue again dominated the left groin peak and wiped out the field in perhaps her greatest victory ever. She won the coveted East Coast Women's title for the second time in three years.

Winning a major title once is tough enough but twice is magic. Only a handful of surfers in the world excelled in both the longboard era and the shortboard era and Susan was one of those few. Her body and surfing ability has changed very little in the past 40 years. She is physically fit and still rips it up whenever she paddles out for a surf. It is great to see her finally get what she deserves....to be inducted into the East Coast Surfing Hall of  Fame.

www.eastcoastsurfinghalloffame.com