“Paddle your fat ass faster”: Bethany Hamilton nukes out-of-control surf daddies

"This is the sort of thing that happens in children’s sports. Like, parents are crazy out there.”

It might be real hard to believe but not everyone out there is pro T-Girls in sport and, in the case of Maui surfer Bethany Hamilton, the WSL opening the door to ‘em a couple years back was one of the triggers that shook her out of her island complacency and got her politically active.

The thirty-six-year-old trad-mammy of four who lost her arm in a shark attack in 2003, claimed tour surfers felt muzzled and agreed with Kelly Slater who called for a trans-only div and added she’d boycott events if it went ahead.

Anyway, Bethany Hamilton has a new target in 2026: bad ol surf dads getting a little serious in the surf with their baby Carissas and Caitys.

In a video posted after a morning session, Hamilton described what she called “the line of the day.”

“Paddle your fat ass. Paddle your fat ass faster. That’s what the line of the day was. This morning at my surf session, a father was saying this to his 12-year-old-ish daughter, and this is the sort of thing that happens in children’s sports. Like, parents are crazy out there.”

Anyone who has spent time around a junior contest knows the sorta daddies. They filming heats, breathing heavy over the shoulders of judges, complaining like hell if a call don’t go their kid’s way, steaming and hissing angrily, while kid is sobbing and snotting guilt and shame.

“This is extreme,” said Hamilton. “You know, this was in the lines of being verbally abusive, and I was about to blow my lid off this father.”

She didn’t, as it happened.

“Someone else stood up for this little girl, and I just think as a society we have to say no to things like this,” she said. “We have to stand up for children, and, you know, this was insane, crazy.”

The someone else was no other than surfing’s power couple Jackie Freestone and his wife Alana, last on these pages when they launched a non-alcoholic spritzer. Freestone, of course, and along with former title contender Matt Wilkinson, is best remembered as dick swinging avatars in the Greatest Surf Movie in the Universe.

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Hamilton closed with a request that shouldn’t need saying in 2026.

“So yeah,” she said, “let’s not say ‘paddle your fat ass faster’ to our twelve-year-old little girls.”

Also, let he who is without sin cast the first stone, and who among hasn’t got a little het up over a kid’s game of ball, a heat, trembling with emotion and so forth.

And, therefore, today’s discussion is: what’s the wildest thing y’done at a kid’s game? Thrown hands with an opposing coach? Yelled at you own kid thereby condemning you to a lifelong shameful memory?