Ten students from Cronulla High School travelled north for the annual Go Kindy High Schools Team Challenge as part of the 2019 Newcastle Surfest.
It was the first time Cronulla High School had entered this competition and the 20-day Surfest is the City of Newcastle’s premier international sporting event.
The Go Kindy High Schools Teams Challenge is open to NSW High Schools and Cronulla with three teams entered made sure they had an impact.
The Cronulla A team was Charlie Chedwiggen, Cooper Manion and Max Rayer, the B team Dane De Coque, Kalani Vandepolder and Sam Cornock and the C team Jetson Kutch, Cruz McKee and Callum and Oscar Payne. The teams were coached by Daryl Vandepolder.
Twenty-five high schools had entered a total of 57 teams for the two days of competition at Merewether Beach and after two rounds of good surfing the Cronulla High A team were ranked first with Cronulla's B team ranked third.
Cronulla's third team had a paddling interference in round two which put them out.
The semi-finals saw both the Cronulla A and B teams in the same four-team heat, so to make the final they had to shut out the other schools in the semi and the boys surfed a faultless heat and both made it through to the final.
As the surf kept pumping through for the final, the A team managed a second place behind Narrabeen Sports High and the Cronulla young groms (the B team) placed fourth.
Apart from a bit of rain Cronulla surfers have had a few good days of surfing early this week starting with Sunday when the wind swung offshore and the 4-5 ft swell cleaned up.
The banks are also lining up nicely with the predominantly Sou-East swell leaving some good sand formations all along the Bay.
The waves are smaller today and the forecast shows this 2-3ft pattern to continue with a small spike on Friday and Sunday pushing up waves to 4ft.
The winds will be offshore for the early before going to the south for the next couple of days then on Friday we should have 4 days straight of offshores and hopefully some swell-It's coming into the best part of the year so dont be wasting it!
The 2019 Vissla Sydney Surf Pro and Sydney Women's Pro presented by Sisstrevolution continued yesterday with Manly Beach providing small, but clean surf for a huge international field of competitors. The day saw the completion of Men's Round 1 along with Women's Round 2, setting the stage for the event top seeds to hit the water in the coming days.
Unfortunately Cronulla's two reps in round one did not progress, with both Jared Hickel and Shane Campbell finishing third in their heats and leaving the 6000 point contest with a throwaway .
All eyes will be on Manly beach today as the Men's top seeds hit the water along with 11 time WSL World Champion Kelly Slater who will be surfing in Heat 9 of Round 2.
Connor O'Leary also hits the water in heat 11 coming up against Aussie Nick Squires,the USA's Evan Geiselman and Frenchman Charly Quivront and really needs to exert some dominance.
Sunshine Coasts Alister Reginato and Hawaiian Keala Tomoda-Bannert took out the 2019 Key Sun Zinke Sydney Pro Junior following a big day of surfing in throaty three-to-four foot beachbreak conditions in Manly-Cronulla's Jay Brown surfing with the big boys made the quarters but needed a 8 point wave to get through into the semi's.
The Vissla Sydney Surf Pro is a collaboration between World Surf League and Surfing NSW to run Sydney's largest surfing event at the iconic Manly Beach.
Last weekend at Merewether, Sally Fitzgibbons and Alex Ribiero (BRA) have claimed victory at the 34th annual Newcastle Surfest, World Surf League Qualifying Series 6000 event in excellent waves at Merewether Beach.
The two had to battle through a huge field of surfers from all over the world to claim the first combined QS6,000 of the season-Sally now joins the likes of Mick Fanning (AUS), Pam Burridge (AUS) and Rebecca Woods (AUS) as a three-time Newcastle Surfest winner having already held the trophy above her head in 2012, 2016.
