Published October 31, 2026
NEWPORT BEACH | AROUND NEWPORT | OCTOBER 31, 2026
Cordell Miller grew up surfing Newport Beach and began riding waves around age nine. By his teens, he was sponsored by Quiksilver and traveling to surf. But the experience also made him curious about the equipment beneath him. After trying boards shaped by different craftsmen, he started making his own. A 1996 Los Angeles Times report said Miller shaped his first board while he was still a student at Corona del Mar High School. He soon began selling boards to friends, and the requests kept coming.
Miller’s career grew from the practical knowledge of a working surfer: what a board needed to do in the waves he rode, and how small changes in shape could affect speed and turns. He developed Cordell Surfboards with business partners and built a local customer base. In a 2002 profile, the Times described him as a Newport native who still surfed regularly while running the business. Miller also spoke to students at Newport Harbor High about turning a personal interest into a career.
That mix—surfer, craftsman and business owner—makes Miller a different kind of Newport surf figure from the contest stars. He was not only riding boards; he was learning how to make them work. A later Newport Beach Magazine feature described him adjusting board design based on his own experience riding different shapes, including experimenting with rocker, the curve running from nose to tail. The idea was to build equipment that responded to how a surfer actually moved through a wave.
Miller’s story is rooted in the everyday mechanics of a surf town: a local kid learns the break, gets curious about his board, and turns that curiosity into a trade. It’s a reminder that Newport’s place in surfing history wasn’t built only by the people whose names appeared in contest standings. It was also built by the people shaping the boards local surfers took back into the water.
Sources: Los Angeles Times, 1996; Los Angeles Times, 2002; Newport Beach Magazine: “Shaping Surfboards in the Digital Age”
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