Wide angle shot of people at the First Look Fair.
“Dear ALL LOVELY NEW MEMBERS!!,
Yo YO YO YO yo, welcome to surf club!!!! :)”
And so began the first message that I’ve ever gotten from the Terrapin Waveriders, this university’s only surfing club.
The club boasts main attractions such as trips to the Outer Banks, North Carolina, lessons for surf novices and good times for all. However, the club’s main attraction should be the ridiculously awesome emails written and disseminated by the club’s leader, Frank Cooper.
Cooper is a senior chemical engineering and mathematics major but often signs off his informative messages as “your benevolent prez,” “surf monarch,” and sometimes, a simple “surf.” Equally as creatively, he fondly refers to club members as “lovely surf people,” “shredderzzzz” or sometimes “surffffffff kidz.”
The surf listserv functions to remind members about meetings, trips and carpooling groups but uses a distinctive prose that almost always involves more vowels than necessary, copious amounts of caps lock and the word “foshizzle.” Wishing peace, love and happiness, Cooper’s poetic discourse is simply a preview of the undoubtedly rad times had by all active Waveriders.
“First and foremost, we really supply means for people who like to surf to get to the beach. Secondly, we pride ourselves a lot on teaching people how to surf,” he said. “You spend weekends together where it’s just you and these other people, and you make some of the best friends you’ve ever had.”
There must be something in the water.
