Surfing: Pair have high hopes for NZ team

While Northland's top scholastic surfers may have missed the cut, Tony Baker and Jason Ruddell will still be flying the Cambridge Blue flag as part of the staff for the New Zealand team at the World Surfing Championships.

The pair will manage and coach the team during their time in Nicaragua (near Costa Rica) this month, hopefully to a better finish than last year.

"We came 10th last year," Ruddell said, who will coach the young surfers. "And if we could lift a couple of places this year it'd be an awesome result.

"I think the best New Zealand has done is fourth, and that year they had two finalists."

Baker and Ruddell were not joined on the team by top Sandy Bay surfer Manu Scott-Arrieta, who missed the final cut.

"To make the cut you've got to be making finals, and he just didn't seem to put it together in the events this year," Ruddell said of Scott-Arrieta, who was named as a non-travelling reserve.

"Within the competition setting there are so many variables as to who will do well and who won't [for example the conditions]. Just on a couple of events he got unlucky, a couple he surfed well but others surfed better.

"He's just going to have to turn up next year with a really good attitude and get a couple of results and he'll make the team.

"He's got the ability, there's no doubt about that, he's been picked for a long time, but like I said, if you're not making finals it's hard to make the team. You see that in the surfing world, you see a lot of people who aren't the best on the board but they know how to win."

The World Junior Surfing Championships are an annual event, having been held since 2003. New Zealand have competed at the event since its inception and have been placed 10th at the 2012 event in Panama. The competition begins on June 8 and runs until June 16.