Mavericks (location) - Origin of The Name

Origin of The Name

In early March 1961, three surfers, Alex Matienzo, Jim Thompson, and Dick Knottmeyer decided to try the distant waves off Pillar Point. With them was a white-haired German Shepherd named Maverick, owned by a roommate of Matienzo. Maverick was used to swimming out with his owner, or with Matienzo, while they were out surfing.

The trio left Maverick on shore but he swam out and caught up with them. Finding the conditions too unsafe for the dog, Matienzo paddled back and tied Maverick to the car bumper before rejoining the others. The riders had limited success that day, surfing overhead peaks about 1/4 mile from shore, just along the rocks that are visible from shore. They deemed conditions for surfing the bigger outside waves too dangerous.

They decided to name the point after Maverick, who seemed to have gotten the most out of the experience. It became known as "Maverick's Point", and later simply "Maverick's".

In the Special Features section of Riding Giants, Jeff Clark mentioned that his little league coach would take the kids to surf the small waves of this same inside break, and stated that the coach used to refer to the break as Mavericks.

Jeff Clark, having grown up in Half Moon Bay, watched Maverick's from an early age from the campus of Half Moon Bay High School and on the rugged coastal shores of Pillar Point. At that time the location was deemed too dangerous to surf. He spent time watching the break, and conceived the possibility of riding Hawaii-sized waves in Northern California. One day in 1975, at the age of 17 and with the waves topping out at 20 to 24 feet (7.3 m), Clark paddled out alone to face Maverick's. He was successful, catching a number of left-breaking waves, thereby becoming the first person (documented) to tackle Maverick's head-on.

Other than a few close friends who had paddled out and seen Maverick's themselves, no big wave surfers believed in its existence. The popular opinion of the time was that there simply were no large, Hawaii-sized waves in California. Yet Clark's classmates from Half Moon Bay High School often spoke of cutting class on big surf days to sit on the bluff and watch Clark ride the giant waves alone.

Two of the next people to surf at Maverick's, on January 22, 1990 and in the company of Clark, were Dave Schmidt (brother of big wave legend Richard Schmidt) and Tom Powers, both from Santa Cruz. John Raymond, from Pacifica, Johathan Galili, from Tel Aviv and Mark Renneker, from San Francisco, surfed Maverick's a few days later.

It is important to realize that documentation proving the chronology and identity of surfers is incomplete. There were likely other surfers whose names do not appear here.