This week, Maori Bay Boardriders hosted the inaugural New Zealand School Surfing Festival. It's a great concept, and the first one held Tuesday and Wednesday was a huge success. Briefly, SNZ reached out to the High Schools of Aotearoa last year and invited them to enter teams into the event, under 18 boys and girls. The format for the two days is Tag Team. Tag Team has been around since the 80's [maybe longer] and it's a really effective way to move surfing events away from the individualism of competition. The team of five surfers have to work together in the 50 minute heat to win, waves are scored out of ten but the team accrue the total. The exciting bit; only one surfer from each team is in the water at one time, the preceding surfer, after their best wave has to come in, sprint up the beach and 'Tag' the next surfer in. It's ingenious, it is so simple, but it creates so much drama.
Western Springs College, running their last surfer in...and they made it!
To catch a decent scoring wave, then get in to give your fellow team mates enough time, as teams do get point penalised if all the whole team is not back in the box at the end hooter. There are all sorts of strategies and fluidity is needed. For example a clever plan would be for 4 of the team to catch ok scoring waves, but fast, giving their key surfer more time to find that bomb. But what if your key surfer bombs, what if one of your team gets caught in a rip for half the heat. Well, shit gets crazy. The young surfers have to operate as a team, it changes the dynamic of a Surf Comp completely. Ironically the inaugural Schools Tag Team, was No Tag [hence me getting to be able to reference the mighty No Tag band] SNZ took mercy on the grommets, because of the huge paddle out and in at Mud Bay it was deemed the surfer in the water could signal their intent to paddle in. The next team member would then do a beach start. Anyhow, it was a sick two days up at the Bay, the groms had so much fun. The Surfing New Zealand photo gallery of my images is HERE more to be added I think too.
And here are some of my favourites from the Bay ....
Yeah Greenbay Gurls... how lucky are you to have Ms Jolly as your PE teacher!
Soph Brock and the Mount College team
The WASSA! Whangamata Area School Surfing Academy .... yep saying Wassa is way easier
That guy hamming it up in the Wassa crew shot is this guy, coach Rungi Ormand
New Plymouth Boys High, just getting back to the box in time- happy days
Meanwhile, adjacent to the comp peak, Kanaiya Webb
Osssh, Whitianga's Lennox Jennings
BOP grom Victor Bauermann
It pumped on Wednesday
The best coffee deliverer in the Bay, Master Mikey Phillips, stoked on the catch ups bro!
Rangitoto College
The Wassa won the boys and ....
The Mounties won the Wahine
FROM THE BOOK STORE
One of the constant slow burners is not a book, it's the second incarnation of the NZ Line-Up Print Sets.