LATE ENTRY: Hawke's Bay's Jeremy Evans could be a late entrant this weekend. PHOTO/FILE
LATE ENTRY: Hawke's Bay's Jeremy Evans could be a late entrant this weekend. PHOTO/FILE
Bronson Primmer and Jesse Trafford are Hawke's Bay's big hopes in the Backdoor BayBash surfing event which will be staged at Waimarama this weekend.
Primmer, a Havelock North premier club rugby player, upstaged more established Hawke's Bay surfers Jeremy Evans and Ben Hazelwood with his semifinal finish during last year'ssecond edition of the annual event at the same venue. Trafford was one of the Bay's top juniors five years ago and is starting to take the sport seriously again according to Surfing New Zealand spokesman Ben Kennings who hasn't ruled out possible late entries from Evans and Hazelwood.
This weekend's combined New Zealand Pro Series and Grom Series event has secured more than 100 entries across seven divisions. Entrants include a number of New Zealand representative surfers who are back from competing overseas.
The open men's division will see three New Zealand team members compete with Mount Maunganui's Matt Hewitt the top seed. Hewitt, Raglan's Taylor Hutchison and Piha's Zen Wallis represented New Zealand at the ISA World Surfing Games in Costa Rica in August and are also all ranked in the top 10 of the ratings.
Fellow New Zealand dual representative Raiha Ensor of Mount Maunganui will spearhead the open women's division and she will be joined by junior representative Britt Kindred of Muriwai in the under-20 division.
Likewise Jonas Tawharu and Lee Ririnui of the Mount and Ohope's Jared Gebert are all back from the World Junior Championships held in the Azores Islands and will compete for one last time this year.
Five of the seven divisions being contested see the ratings battle already decided after dominant performances earlier in the year.
Gisborne's Maz Quinn has secured his fourth straight series win. Quinn won the Rip Curl Pro at Raglan earlier in the year along with the Go Pro Canterbury Champs and finished third at the Billabong National Championships in Dunedin at the start of the year.
Whangamata's Ella Williams has already claimed the title in the open women's division after winning her first national title to start her year and then going on to win the Rip Curl Pro held in April.
In the junior divisions, Taylor Hutchison has an unsurmountable lead in the under-20 boys division. Tawharu has been too strong in the under-17 boys division.
In the girls junior divisions Mount Maunganui's Elin Tawharu has already put her name on the title for the under-17 girls while Georgia Wederell of the Mount has easily claimed the under-14 division which isn't being contested this weekend.
The two titles up for grabs are the under-20 girls and under-14 boys. The under-20 girls will see a head-to-head battle for the title between Auckland surfers Britt Kindred of Muriwai, who leads the ratings, and second-placed Claudia Fraser of Piha.
Action will take place from 8am to 5pm both days with a call on the event venue made first thing each morning.
