Surfing New South Wales

Surfers revel on the opening day at the 15th annual Rusty Gromfest

Friday, 9 July 2010

A testing opening day to this year's Rusty Gromfest saw Australia's best young 16 year and under surfers light up the windy but solid 3 to 5 feet (1.5m) waves at Lennox Head.

With waves breaking a long way offshore these young talents were forced to call on all their ocean skills to deal with stormy conditions and find the right waves to score big in their quest for a prestigious Rusty Gromfest title.

Great wave scores were always possible in these conditions particularly when the surfers positioned correctly and linked onto the best of the peeling left and right breaking waves.

Central Coast NSW brothers Brendan and Joshua Hay clearly felt right at home in these waves both winning their heats comfortably and both posting excellent 8 point plus wave scores.

"I selected my waves carefully and tried not to take off on any close-outs" said 14 year-old Brendan Hay after his heat win in the 14 Boys division.

"I made the quarter finals in the 12 Boys division here two years ago and I'd like to at least improve on that result this year.

"It's a hard event to win or even make the final - there's excellent surfers from all over Australia here and even some excellent internationals so you know every heat gets harder but still I feel good after that win and I'll do my best in all my upcoming heats" added Hay.

Joshua Hay was the day's top scoring surfing posting an outstanding 9.4 in his two wave heat tally of 17.40 in his 16 Boys impressive round two heat win.

Other expected stand-outs today included Cooper Chapman (Nth Narrabeen NSW), Jack Robinson (Margaret River WA), Nick Callister (Noosa/Qld), Michael Wright (Lennox Head) and Jackson Coffey (Crescent Head NSW).

Late in the day the first two heats of the inaugural Kerrazy Airshow Invitational hit the water chasing $3000 in product prizes from Nixon.

Josh Kerr, probably the world's most dynamic aerialist was on-hand to personally judge the first two semi-finals of this event which saw surfers boosting big aerials with ease.

The final of the Kerrazy Airshow will be surfed in good conditions at some stage through the weekend!

Cleaner conditions are forecast for tomorrow's day 2 at the Rusty Gromfest with Sunday looking likely as the finals day however this event does have a waiting period that extends through to Tuesday enabling organizers to surf these elite youngsters in the best possible conditions.

The only divisions surfed today were Boys 16 and 14's.

A photo gallery of complimentary images from each day at the Rusty Gromfest can be found and downloaded by following this link - https://www.filesanywhere.com/fs/v.aspx?v=897264895d647678a9a7

The Rusty Gromfest is made possible due to the assistance from FCS, Otis, bandit fm, NBN, The Northern Star. The Kerrazy Air Invitational is presented by Nixon.