In a rare win for Sutherland Shire natural footers, Maxime Rayer took first place in the junior boys division at the Sydney Regional Surfing titles at Maroubra last week.
Goofy footers have ruled competition for decades in Cronulla so surfers like Maxime, a 15-year-old surfer from Caringbah South who surfs for the Elouera Boardriders club, hope to change history.
Overall it was an outstanding result for Cronulla High School with a junior boys clean sweep with Jarvis Earle and Cooper Manion finishing second and third.
In the senior boys, Blake Sawtell got a fighting fourth as did Sophie Turner in the senior girls. Sophie and Casey Earle were the highest-ranked senior girl surfers from the same school selected as NSW representatives for the southern Sydney region.
Our Lady of Mercy, Burraneer surfer girls Harriet Hurst and Summer Halliwell-Quinn will join them as the highest-placed junior girls school team in the southern Sydney regional.
Woolooware’s high achiever Jay Brown went back to back, once again taking out the senior boys and is one of the favorites for the state and Australian titles.
The NSW State School titles will be held at Port Macquarie in July.
School Surfing NSW exists to support government and non-government schools in the provision of opportunities for students to undertake surfing within their school’s curriculum.
Bevan Gosby, Cronulla High’s surfing teacher co-ordinator, said competition was tough at the school because they could only take four surfers from each division and they had to run a qualifying contest to even make the team.
“Cronulla High has a great history in the scholastic ranks with WCT surfers Connor O’Leary, Kirk Flintoff, Richard Marsh and [Mark Occhilupo] being past students,” he said.
“Surfers have to really put in, meet certain standards and participate at school to be able to represent the school.”
School Surfing in NSW is broken into seven regions. Each runs a regional titles for a schools team event and an individual event culminating in the Australian School State titles.
Cronulla came alive over the last week with big swell and ideal weather conditions that showcased the wave variety and reef possibilities that surround us.
A 6/8 ft predicted East swell pushed through on Monday morning after a weekend with good 3/4ft offshore waves.
All the points and reefs were firing with the beaches being too out of control to really surf.Tow-ins and bail outs were the order of the day and some big waves were to be had at the Cape.
Swellnet predicts the best day to be tuesday-so you have missed it! This swell will be then easing into 2ft with mainly light winds, leaving clean but small leftover beachies on Wednesday and Thursday. Fri/Sat expect a minor swell from the E/NE with light variable winds tending NW over the weekend.
Meanwhile, a huge international field of 144 men and 48 women surfers have arrived in Japan for the 2017 Ichinomiya Chiba Open.
The WSL Qualifying Series (QS) 6000 event will take place on the consistent beach breaks at Shida Point, Tsurigasaki Beach. Shane Campbell (ranked 19th), Harrison Martin and Jared Hickel will hope to bank some valuable ratings points before the half-year seeding adjustments.
Finally in Biarritz at the ISA World Surfing Games- Team France put on a dominating performance at the Grande Plage on day 3 of the 2017 Surfing Games in Biarritz.
Through a superstar final featuring world-class female surfers, Team France's Pauline Ado and Johanne Defay came out on top and respectively took the Gold and Silver Medals for the host country.
Rounding out the women's podium were Costa Rica's Leilani McGonagle, who earned her second ISA World Surfing Games Bronze Medal in three years, and South Africa's Bianca Buitendag, who earned Copper Medal.
Australia once again weren't to be sighted, both surfers dipping out in round three.Germany and Portugal came 5th-almost in the medals.
I hope Australia take this seriously because this is the Olympic surfing pool and sport funding is tied into results! Better luck for the men,with Ben Penny winning his first heat.