Did you know the first professional female surfer was born in Pennsylvania?

(WHTM) – The first professional female surfer was born in Pennsylvania.

Margo Oberg, formerly Margo Godfrey, was born on Sept. 8, 1953, in Pennsylvania. She didn’t stay long in the Keystone State, moving to La Jolla, California when she was five years old.

Oberg got into sports at ten years old by trying tennis. After that, she turned to surfing.

Oberg competed in the Western Regional Surfing Championships right away and was victorious at just 11 years old. A year later, she won the 12-year-old division of the Windansea Surf Club menehune contest.

Oberg beat the rest of the all-male competition.

Oberg then competed in the Makaha International, earning a finalist placement, followed by a second-place finish in the United States Surfing Championships.

At 15 years old Oberg was the top-seeded women’s surfer in California. She won the World Contest in Puerto Rico in back-to-back years, 1968 and 1969. However, she retired in 1970 after coming in second in the 1970 World Contests in Australia. Oberg moved to Hawaii to teach surfing and run a beach concession stand instead.

However, in 1974 Oberg came back in a historical fashion.

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Oberg won a contest in Malibu in 1974 followed by competing in 1975 in the men’s Smirnoff as one of seven women in the running. Oberg earned the top spot and won $1,000, making her the first woman in the world to be paid for surfing.

Oberg went on to win more competitions and opened her own surfing school, the Margo Oberg Surf School in Kauai, in 1977.

Oberg was inducted into the International Surfing Hall of Fame in 1991 and the Surfing Walk of Fame as the Woman of the Year. Sports Illustrated listed her as 99th on the Top 100 Women Athletes of the 20th Century in 2000.

In 2001 Oberg was inducted into the Hawai’i Sports Hall of Fame and most recently in 2018, she earned the “Silver Surfer Award” from the California Surf Museum honoring her lifetime achievements.

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