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academia and surfing

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advertising and surfing

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Bermuda

Freckle-faced pro surfer and coach from Laguna Beach; winner of the 1991 Professional Surfing Association of America tour, as well as the 2001 Swell XXL Big Wave Awards. Parsons was born (1965) and raised in Laguna, began surfing at age six, and was runner-up in the juniors division of the 1983 United States Surfing Championships. He had few spectacular moments during his 12-year Association of Surfing Professionals career (1984 to 1996), but he was smooth, consistent, and tactically sound, and finished the 1987 season ranked 15th.

When he took out the 1991 PSAA tour, Parsons finished ahead of of future world tour stars like Shane Beschen, Taylor Knox, and Rob Machado. Still, he attracted more attention for his clean-cut looks and relentlessly agreeable disposition. "Needs more spontaneity," surf journalist Derek Hynd once wrote of Parsons. "Needs a punk haircut. Needs to shock someone. Anyone."

Parsons did in fact shock people by regularly manhandling 25-foot surf at Baja's Todos Santos in the late '80s and '90s, and after retiring from the competition circuit he began to devote even more time to big-wave riding, eventually becoming tow-in partners with former nemesis and top-ranked pro Brad Gerlach. In January 2001, Parsons rode a 60-foot-plus wave at Cortes Bank, an open-ocean reef located 100 miles west of San Diego. Two months later, a photograph of Parsons's giant wave earned him the $60,000 first-place check in the Swell XXL Big Wave Awards—the biggest cash prize in surfing history.

The following year, Parsons and Gerlach placed second in the first Tow-In World Cup, held at Jaws, Maui. In 2008 he caught a wave later judged to be 77-feet (thought to be largest ever ridden up to that point) , also at Cordes Bank, and again won the XXL Award for the biggest wave of the year. That summer, Parsons was inducted to the Surfer's Hall of Fame in Huntington Beach.

Parsons appeared in more than two dozen surf movies and videos, including 

 (1998). He was cofounder of Realm clothing in 1998 and Von Zipper sunglasses in 1999.

In 2011, Parsons, age 46, took a full-time job as coach for Orange County teen sensation Kolohe Andino. "It's a pretty unprecedented thing," Parsons mused to 

 magazine. "I'm employed by Kolohe Andino Incorporated. That's the direction the sport's going in. I've been hired by a 17-year-old."

In early 2013, while surfing triple-overhead waves at Ocean Beach, San Francisco, Parsons fractured the C7 vertebra in his neck; he was expected to make a full recovery, but as of mid-2013 his big-wave future was up in the air.

Parsons, Mike

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