A healthy attendance of competitors from all parts of the United Kingdom contested the various divisional titles, while looking to secure valuable points for the remainder of the UK series.
The weekend was blessed with glorious sunny weather and one to two-feet waves throughout and a late 9 o’clock finish on Sunday evening.
The UK’s élite soon dazzled spectators with some explosive surfing and mixing more established manoeuvres with progressive ‘new school’ ones, they were rewarded accordingly by the panel of International Surfing Association judges.
The CI contingent soon found their feet with some fine surfing by Guernsey’s Tom Hook and Jersey’s Max Bennett in the early rounds.
All CI surfers showed great character and determination to quash the UK domination and it was Jersey’s Claudia Cosgrove, Amelia Gould and Ma-Ya Larrson who reached their respective finals.
Jersey’s Will Masterman, now surfing under the England flag, gained a credible third place in the under-16 boys’ section.
Channel Islands Surfing Federation operations directory John Harvey said: ‘It’s been a fabulous weekend and good to see our team put together a great event at short notice and being able to work long hours to insure the event was completed.
‘The standard of surfing was high and our surfers would have learnt more about competing at this level.
Joel Gray, from Rip Curl, said ‘What a great event to kick off this year’s Grom Search series.
‘We were really impressed with how the event was put together and ran and a huge well done to the Channel Islands Surfing Federation for their excellent work here. We would love to come back for more fun next year.’
The CISF thanked volunteers, judges, photographers, cameramen, Surfing England, the Watersplash and Rip Curl [for choosing Jersey as a venue] for their support.
Final results, U12 girls: 1, Lauren Sandland; 2, Belle Betteridge; 3, Ma-Ya Larsson (Jsy). U12 boys: 1, Lukas Skinner; 2, Fynn Gillespie; 3, Nikita Petrov; 4, Arthur Rendell.
U14 girls: 1, Alys Barton; 3, Claudia Cosgrove (Jsy); 3, Amelia Gould (Jsy); 4, Belle Betteridge. U14 boys: 1, Nikita Petrov; 2, Lukas Skinner; 3, Eli-Perrin Davis; 4, Beau Betteridge. U16 girls: 1, Alys Barton; 2, Bonita Whitelock; 3, Lauren Sandland; 4, Claudia Cosgrove (Jsy). U16 boys: 1, Max Hudson; 2, Travis Pearce; 3, Will Masterman (Jsy surfing for England); 4, Louis Ingram.
The next stop is in Croyde on the 16/17 June with Max Hudson and Alys Barton in the driving seat after their big wins in Jersey. Another key taking point coming out of Jersey was the strong depth of talent in the younger divisions that was on display – Lauren Sandland took the girls U12s win, Lukas Skinner the boys under-12s and Nikita Petrov the under-14s. The Smith Move of the Event award went to Travis Pearce for a rad air and Stanley Norman pocketed a Rip Curl GPS watch for being the fastest-tracked surfer of the event.
