Cordell Miller

After catching his first wave at the age of nine, Cordell fell in love with surfing. This love led to a promising amateur career in his early teens and an enviable professional one by the time Cordell was old enough to drive. Focusing on editorial coverage instead of contests, Cordell became a standout at Southern California’s most famous beach and point breaks.

Cordell spent endless hours in the summer in the water at Lower Trestles in San Clemente. He used his six-foot-two-inch frame to throw buckets of water that surfers smaller in stature couldn’t and using his coordination and natural sense of balance to draw smooth lines that most surfers his size were too awkward to maintain. Cordell appeared in innumerable magazines displaying these patented moves and soon became a surfing household name before he was twenty.

Cordell makes no apologies for his love of surfing and his choice to pursue this lifestyle.   It’s probably the coolest thing I’ve ever done. It’s the funniest thing you can do. And above all…the most challenging.   It was this love for surfing that led him to his other passion…shaping. He spent a lot of time as a grommet hanging out in the factories of local shapers in Orange County. By the age of nineteen, he decided that he wanted take a stab at making his own boards. Under the tutelage of outstanding California shapers including Mark McConnell, Mike Estrada, Bill Stembridge, and legendary Hawaiian, Ben Aipa, Cordell was soon shaping, glassing, and sanding his own boards.

Back in the water, Cordell’s friends saw him ripping on his self-fashioned sticks, and they asked if they could try them, too.  Newport standouts like Todd Miller and Matt Paterson tried his boards and came back raving about them. From there Cordell spent endless hours perfecting his board outlines and templates, and almost as much time testing them at his local surf breaks. His friends, who ranged from ASP world tour conquerors to underground local rippers, tested them for him, as well. Cordell’s infatuation with shaping surfboards is equal to, if not greater, than his love for riding them. He can talk about board design for hours at a time. He is constantly riding his own boards and those made by other shapers trying to find the magic board. In his words, Cordell says that it all comes down to finding the right bottom curves and contours in a board. He is a firm believer that the rocker affects the way a board works above all else. (Bio above from Dan Bialek at EXPN.com)