During strenuous outdoor youth basketball practices in the North Shore, Julian Williams often found himself glancing over at the beach nearby.
Williams would see some of his friends running with joy and smiling before getting in the water at Hale‘iwa Beach Park. Over on the basketball court, Williams described himself as "not happy, sweating and getting yelled at."
A teammate's father brought multiple surfboards to a birthday party, showing Williams how to wax a board and put a leash on it. Then it was time for Williams, a middle schooler at the time, to get into the water. Williams was instantly hooked. The freedom of being in the water and standing up for a second or two at a time left him wanting more. Although Williams got his start in surfing later than others on the North Shore, it would eventually become his forte.
Williams, whose grandfather is a pastor at Waialua Christian Church, grew up attending church every Sunday. Surfing quickly became another avenue for him to explore his faith.
"It was my spiritual place," Williams tells Aloha State Daily of the water. "I grew up in the church. I found that I had a stronger spiritual connection to my higher power and to myself when I was in the ocean, and that's kind of what kept on drawing me back."
After getting accepted to Kamehameha as an eighth grader, Williams dormed at the school in order to save time on the daily commute from Waialua. He graduated in 2018, enrolling at the Los Angeles Film School after high school.
"As a Hawaiian, I was always taught, especially at Kamehameha, that it is our duty to perpetuate our culture," Williams said. "I think not only being a surfer, but being a waterman is a very big part of Hawaiian culture. For me to be able to share the love and share the respect, not only to people in Hawai‘i, people all over the world, will only make this respect and love and appreciation for the ocean grow."
Now 25, surfing has continued to be an avenue for Williams to explore and embrace his roots. In July, Williams became the first black Native Hawaiian to compete in the World Surf League after he earned a wildcard slot in the US Open of Surfing.
On Saturday, Williams will look to defend his shortboard and longboard titles at A Great Day in the Stoke, an event organizers call "the largest gathering of black surfers," in Huntington Beach, Calif. Williams has won a total of five titles at the event, which debuted in 2022.
"Being that I am African American and that I am Hawaiian, I feel the sense of ownership of surfing and knowing that it is who I am and it is what I come from," Williams said. "It has allowed me to kind of take this space and be the representation that I don't see, and it's allowed me to be a lot more confident in doing so, knowing what I come from, knowing how Hawaiian I am, knowing how black I am, I can go out there and pridefully say that this is what I do, because my ancestors have been doing this for centuries, for hundreds of years, probably before it was even recorded that we know they're doing this."
Williams' passion for surfing was accelerated by his mentor, the late Montgomery "Buttons" Kaluhiokalani, who was revered in the sport but passed away in 2013 due to a battle with lung cancer. Like Williams, Kaluhiokalani was black and Native Hawaiian.
"When I was going out surfing, he was the only person that looked like me, so we instantly kind of connected. I had the big fro, he had the big fro," Williams recalled. "We were both dark-skinned. And although, yes, Hawaiians are dark-skinned as well, I still didn't look like or fit that mold. Nobody really knew I was Hawaiian, even after I graduated high school."
As evidenced by his postsecondary education, Williams says he's passionate about film and storytelling, a pursuit that began with an interest in photography during his days at Kamehameha.
With a desire to display who he is beyond surfing, Williams put out a short film in 2024 in collaboration with NOWNESS, titled "Makai."
"It's a really cool kind of little like peek into my journey," Williams says of the film, which dives into some of the challenges he faced in his childhood. "I go to tears every time I see it."
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Christian Shimabuku can be reached at christian@alohastatedaily.com.
