Few words can describe the kind of moment Ty Roach ’09 experienced recently: “I was surfing, [with] just my dad and my childhood best friend,” he recounts. “Dolphins are jumping all in the waves. There are sharks and turtles. Pelicans flying by.” He settles on the word “sublime,” but says, “I have those moments all the time.”

Such is the life of a surfer, something Roach has been since he first started in junior competitions in his hometown of Morehead City, N.C., when he was 8 years old. Also a decorated state-champion high school wrestler in Carteret County, Roach wrestled five years for the Wolfpack and turned pro surfer in 2010. It’s a career that’s seen numerous wins and has taken him from the Crystal Coast to the Sunset Cliffs of San Diego, Calif., and to Hawaii. 

In January, Roach was inducted into the National Surfing/Wrestling “Ironman” Hall of Fame, based in Maryland. The honor celebrates careers in both sports. 

After turning pro in surfing, he began winning national titles and East Coast Longboard championships. He has coached surfing national champions, produces his own line of surfboards and still actively competes in the World Surf League, the sport’s major league. 

That’s all while serving as a Mary Derrickson McCurdy Visiting Scholar at the Duke Marine Lab in Beaufort, N.C., and running his own reef and ecosystem restoration company. “A little bit of science, but a little bit of surf, as is usual with my life,” says Roach, who was also valedictorian at NC State as a triple major (biology, botany and chemistry, if you’re keeping score). 

Roach, 40, says the honor is humbling. But it’s the unique perspective surfing allows him when he’s riding through a wave, or “barrel,” that he deeply appreciates. 

“I think the barrel is a prime example of that sublime,” Roach says. “You’re just in the right place at the right time. 

“No one else is ever going to get that vision.”

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