Sierra Kerr’s qualification for the Challenger series, the second-tier of international surfing and pathway to the World Surf League, has been long foretold. Kerr, who recently turned 18, was a child surf prodigy; it was just a matter of time before the Australian – a former junior world champion – started climbing the competitive ladder.
Less foreseen was what happened late last month, when the final qualifying event wrapped up and the 2025 Challenger series field was announced. Alongside Kerr on the list of surfers contesting the five-stop, five-country competition was none other than her father, Josh Kerr.
Now 41, Kerr senior enjoyed a successful career on the WSL in the early 2010s, finishing in the top 10 for four consecutive years. An early pioneer of aerial surfing (he even has an above the lip manoeuvre – " target="_blank" class="link"> the Kerrupt – named after him), Kerr retired from the professional circuit in the late 2010s. But as he travelled the world with his daughter while she competed in recent years, Kerr decided he might as well join in. “If I’m at the party I may as well dance,” he said last month.
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Sierra and Josh Kerr are hard to pin down. A busy travel schedule, surf competitions, illness and a cyclone all delayed their conversation with the Guardian. When the stars finally aligned, it took place with the WSL’s current leg, the El Salvador Pro, on television in the background. This is a family that live and breathe surfing.
Sierra made her WSL debut with a wildcard in Fiji last year and keeps a watchful eye on the current campaign. Several of her closest friends are competitors and, pending qualification through the Challenger series, she will join them at surfing’s top table full-time next year.
“Last year I wasn’t super wanting to qualify because I always wanted to finish high school before I do it,” Sierra says. “I want to get on and start competing with all of my friends – Bettylou [Sakura Johnson], Caity [Simmers, the defending world champion], Molly [Picklum]. I want to see how I stack up against them and surf some good waves.”
Josh, on the other hand, is very much taking a back-seat. “Honestly, it’s still just fun and games for me,” he laughs. When the competition “rashie” is on, Josh says, he will be wanting to win – but there will be no elite athlete diets or gruelling training regimes for him. Kerr senior harbours no aspirations of a WSL return – although it is not beyond the realms of possibility (surf legend Kelly Slater was competing on the tour into his 50s).
“That would be pretty mental,” Sierra says with a laugh at the idea of joining the WSL with her father in tow. “I don’t know if he’s gunning for it, but that would be sick.” Josh is quick to downplay the possibility. “Let’s just see if I can still mix it up,” he adds.
The prospect of Josh – one of the best surfers in the world a decade and a half ago – competing with surfers half his age, the next generation of stars, will certainly make for great viewing when the Challenger series kicks off in Newcastle in June. But Josh shrugs off any suggestion that his rivals in the water might be intimidated. “I don’t know if they know who I am,” he says. “I’ve been off tour for seven years, and all of these guys are between 17 and 21. I think they just see me as Sierra’s dad.”
Not surprisingly, given her father’s career, Sierra has grown up around sport. In an Instagram post to celebrate her 18th birthday in February, Josh commented: “from ballerina classes to skateboarding, golf, rugby, fishing, surfing and everything else in between, I’ve loved being right by your side.” But it was not until Sierra hit her teenager years that surfing came to the fore (she had initially been touted as a skateboarding prodigy).
It was a trip to Indonesia that changed her sporting direction. Just 13, the Kerrs took Sierra on a surf trip alongside some of her young friends – Simmers, Bella Kenworthy (a WSL debutant this year), Erin Brooks (who joined Sierra as a WSL wildcard in Fiji last year and won the event, at just 17). “There were heaps of the crew there, it was just so fun – pushing each other,” she says. “That was the trip where I thought: ‘This is pretty fun, I want to keep doing this’.”
Josh says that he did not want to encourage Sierra into competitive surfing, and risk jeopardising its lifestyle role for her and the family. “Surfing was always there for her in the background, as she focused on other sports,” he says. “I didn’t want surfing to be a ‘sport’ for her, until she wanted it to be.”
The parent-child dynamic in sport can be fraught; there are countless examples of over-expecting parents pushing their children to breaking point. Josh admits that he is no stranger to these challenging dynamics. “I watch it, on the sidelines,” he says. “But I just try and be a father, first and foremost, and enjoy the experience.” Josh serves as Sierra’s coach, but says he tries to keep it relatively light-touch.
“Surfing has given me everything in my life – so it’s very special to me, as a past-time, a lifestyle,” Josh says. “I want Sierra, no matter what happens with her surfing career, to still want to surf every day and enjoy the ocean.”
Sierra comes of age at a thrilling time for women’s surfing. Equal prize money, an integrated calendar and rapid advances in skill, in both heavy barrels and high-flying aerial maneuverers, have helped transform the sport.
“It’s a great time to be coming up through the ranks,” says Sierra, in a slight American twang – inherited from her time living in California, before the Kerrs returned to the Gold Coast, and her American mother, Nikki Kerr. “All of my friends – we’re just trying to push the level of those who came before us, try to take it to a level that’s never been seen before, and set the standard for the next generation.”
There is a certain continuity in Sierra being among an era-defining generation of young female surfers, changing the nature of the sport, just as her father helped forge the aerial surfing that is now commonplace on the WSL. “To see [Sierra] be at the forefront of that, the innovative surfing on the female side, it’s been pretty amazing to watch,” Josh says. “That’s the most interesting thing in surfing right now – watching the development of the female side, watching them break down all those barriers.”
His daughter’s love of surfing has certainly proven fortuitous for Josh. “She’s basically my best friend, my partner in crime,” he says. “She’s my jet ski partner when the waves come good, she’s a great ski driver [surfers use jet-skis to be towed into waves in big conditions].”
At some point, once Sierra is firmly established on the WSL, she might want more independence than the father-coach combo offers. Josh, for his part, talks of retirement to a yacht and occasional visits from his high-flying daughter. But for now, the Kerrs remain inseparable. “Dad always says until I kick him out, he’ll be there,” Sierra says. Come the Challenger series, Kerr senior will be there competing alongside his daughter. The past, present and future of surfing, in one father-daughter duo.
