Margo Godfrey-Oberg
At an early age Godfrey and her family relocated from Pennsylvania to La Jolla, California. She started on surf mats and graduated to longboards at age 10. She won her first contest at 12, against the boys in the WindanSea Surf Club Menehune contest. She was hooked. In 1966, mentored by Mike Doyle, Godfrey made the final at the Makaha International, and placed 2nd at the US Championships.
Up until 1968, Joyce Hoffman was the reigning champion in women’s surfing. When Godfrey came on the scene she was beating Hoffman the WSA AAAA division in California. In 1968 Godfrey won the World Contest in Puerto Rico, the Makaha International, the East Coast Championships and the Surfer Poll. A changing of the guard had occurred. Godfrey easily made the transition form longboarding to shortboarding during the *Shortboard Revolution*. While Hoffman set the standards for women’s competitive longboarding, Godfrey set the standards for women’s competitive shortboarding. Although Hoffman was known for big wave riding too, it was Godfrey who is credited with big wave riding on the north shore of Oahu, charging 15’ Sunset.
In 1969 Godfrey was the first woman to earn a paycheck surfing, $150 in the Smirnoff Pro Am in Santa Cruz and she also won all four events in the WSA AAAA division California circuit. 1970 she placed 2nd at the World Championships behind Sharron Weber. Devastated after losing to Weber, Godfrey retired for a time.
In 1972 she married Steve Oberg and moved to Kaui. Then, in 1975 Lightning bolt offered her a lucrative contract and she returned to competition once again, promptly winning the Women’s International Professional Surfing Championships in Malibu. In 1977 the International Professional Surfing (IPS) added a women’s division. Oberg took a 2nd to Lynn Boyer. That same year she won the Surfer Poll again and opened her surf school, Margo Oberg Surf School on Kauai, which she still owns and operates today.
In 1979 she took another hiatus from competitive surfing. Oberg came back and won back to back titles in the IPS in 1980 and 1981. Although though she retired full time from competitive surfing at age 29, she still competed in some events in Hawaii winning the World Cup at Sunset in 1983.
While she was still competing, she wrote a column for the Honolulu Advertiser and Surfer Magazine. During this time Oberg did color commentary for ABC’s Wide World of Sports. In 1985 Surfer Magazine wrote an article “25 Surfers Whose Surfing Changed the Sport.” Oberg was the only woman included. She was inducted into the Surfing Hall of Fame in 1991 and the Huntington Beach Surfing Walk of Fame in 1995.
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