Mount surfers lead Kiwi charge

Mount locals Raiha Ensor, left, and Kehu Butler led the Kiwi charge at the world junior surfing champs in Japan. PHOTO/FILE

The New Zealand Junior Surfing team bowed out of the 2017 Vissla ISA World Junior Championships in Japan after the three team members remaining in the event came up short in their afternoon heats.

The team is in 11th position and will be relying on other team performances which could see them climb as high as ninth, surpassing their 2016 ranking of 10th.

New Zealand's top-ranked surfer was Raiha Ensor from Mount Maunganui who competed in the Under 18 Girls Division, finishing ninth.

Ensor was the only Kiwi that went into day six with two lives left. However, in her first heat of the day, she finished fourth and fell back into the repechage rounds where again, she suffered a loss finishing third to Hawaiian powerhouses Summer Macedo and Brisa Hennessy.

"I would have liked to make it further in the competition and better my result of seventh from last year especially with it being my final year in this event," Ensor said of her overall performance.

"I think the level of surfing has increased since last year though so I'm relatively happy with my result." Despite conditions being some of the best of the eventwith waves up to 1.0m and clean offshore winds, Ensor still found the conditions tricky.

"There were two peaks you could take off from and I found myself caught between the two a bit in my qualifying round heat."

This is the final year that Ensor is eligible for the event and she looks back fondly on how the event has progressed her surfing and in particular the friendships she has made with surfers from all over the world, as well as her Kiwi teammates.

Kehu Butler, also from Mount Maunganui, had the biggest workload of the day surfing through two rounds before falling in his third heat of the day to surfers from France and the US.

Butler finished 11th overall and felt that it was wave selection that hindered his performance as much as an awkward fall midway through the heat.

"I slipped on my front foot and quickly pulled my elbow up to block the board hitting me. It didn't really hinder my performance," he said.

"That last heat, I just caught the average waves when I should have probably waited and hunted a bigger one. But I still felt like I fought back in the end."

Butler echoed Ensor on the performances levels describing the surfing during the week as "epic".

"It's always good to see my international friends out there pushing me and everyone to surf our best. I feel like every year the level gets higher and higher, almost to a QS (world qualifying series) level. But I definitely felt like my surfing was up there with them all. I'm just gonna walk away from this event practising getting on the best waves."

Gisborne's Saffi Vette contested two heats of the Under 16 Girls Division during the day, advancing out of her fifth round matchup in second place before placing fourth in her last heat and finishing eleventh overall.

"I have definitely gained a lot of international knowledge competing in this comp and I now realise that I need to step my game up in and out of the water to be the best surfer possible. Hopefully, I take this experience over to Australia next year and do some Pro Junior events and maybe a couple QS events."