Home for the holidays

One of Hawai‘i’s hottest up-an-comers finally has some down time to spend with her family and friends. And just in time for the holidays.

Having just wrapped her season on the Association of Surfing Professionals’ World Qualifying Series and traveling around the world, Hanalei’s Alana Blanchard is back home and enjoying her vacation.

“I’m real excited to be back home,” said the 18-year-old. “I only have a couple of months before I have to go back out. I’m hang out with my family and my friends and probably go surfing.”

Blanchard has been really busy.

Last year, Blanchard had five first-place finishes — women’s Pipeline, Rip Curl Girls Festival Junior Pro in Spain, Roxy Pro Trials Hale‘iwa, Billabong Pro Pre-Trials at Ho‘okipa and the Volcom Pufferfish Surf Series here at Pine Trees — made the quarterfinals of the Rip Curl Girls Festival, a third-place finish at the Hawai‘i Amateur Surfing Association’s state championships at Ala Moana Bowls and a fourth-place finish at the National Scholastic Surfing Association’s national championships in California.

That projected her into a No. 5 world ranking among the women for 2008.

Blanchard said that at the beginning of the year, she wasn’t even thinking about making the championship tour. She just wanted to get a feel of what the professional competitive scene would be like.

“It was my first year, and I just wanted to take it easy because I didn’t want to be too down on myself if I didn’t make it,” she said.

But after solid finishes this year — she finished third at the Midori Pro at Newcastle and made it to the quarters and semis of several competitions — she was able to finished ninth among the women to secure a coveted spot on next year’s Women’s Dream Tour.

“It was kind of tough toward the end (of the ’QS) because I started to think that I could make the ’CT,” she said. “Then it was like, the pressure was on.”

But Blanchard said she tried to not let it get to her, especially now that she’s officially on the tour.

“I try not to be too hard or put pressure on myself,” she said.

Blanchard said the best part of being on the ’QS was the trips.

“Getting to travel around the world, getting to see the cool places and experience all the different cultures was really great,” she said. “I really liked going to Indonesia and Australia. Indonesia I liked because it’s kind of like here. It reminds me of home. It’s really pretty and the people are nice. Australia I liked because it was really different.”

But with all that moving around — she was in Australia for a whole month — there are down sides.

“The hardest part is going away,” she said. “It’s hard leaving Kaua‘i. It’s hard to leave home.”

Then of course, there are the places she needs to go for competitions or photo shoots that she’d rather not visit.

“There are some places that you just really don’t want to go to,” she said. “Like the places where it’s not that nice and the water is cold.”

She is almost always in good company though. There are quite a bit of talented young Hawa‘i surfers and a lot of them are all friends and go to the same meets.

Blanchard is really good friends with fellow North Shore surfer Bethany Hamilton.

“I travel a lot with Bethany and it definitely helps having a friend go with you,” she said. “And I’m friends with some of the girls from O‘ahu and Maui, too.”

From the start of her budding career, her sponsors have always had her back.

“Alana has evolved into an amazing all-around athlete,” said Rip Curl USA marketing director Dylan Slater said in a release. “It’s refreshing to see how she has balanced her job, set goals and achieved them. Everyone here at Rip Curl is ecstatic.”

For, surfing is her chosen path.

But that’s not to say she’s also not thinking of the distant future.

Blanchard will return to Tour in February.

“I definitely want to do the surfing thing for now, but once I get older, I was thinking of taking some college classes, maybe major in business and working in the surfing industry,” she said. “But that’s way down the road.”

• Lanaly Cabalo, sports editor, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 237) or lcabalo@kauaipubco.com