Since 2011, local surf school, Sugar Surf has been empowering women and encouraging the community to get out on the water.

“I was born a beach girl,” smiles Cape Cod native Katy Weeks. And how could she not be—growing up near the ocean, surrounded by surf and a community who seems to always be drawn to the beach? Although she was exposed to the local surf community at an early age, the now seasoned surfer didn’t find herself bitten by the surfing bug until she was in her teens. 

Weeks remembers when she was growing up in the 90s and early 2000s, there were not many women surfing, “It was just me and a few of my friends, Rachel Finn, Mercy Reed and a few other women, but after a while we started to notice more and more girls getting involved. More people in general, right around the Blue Crush [popular 2000s surf movie] era.” Noticing that a lot of people they were sharing waves with hadn’t learned the local etiquette, rules or the “pecking order in surfing,” Weeks says, “We thought, ‘Maybe we should start a surf school, and see how it goes?’” The goal was to share everything that they had learned about the lifestyle over the years from being in the surf industry and traveling to some of the most popular surfing destinations around the world. And thus, she founded Sugar Surf as the head instructor, with her friend Rachel Finn, in 2011.