Five skilled local surfers are excited to front a threatening team of talent representing the Bay of Plenty on the waves at the Hurley New Zealand Boardrider Club Championships this weekend in Whangamata.

With the championships to host the top 16 Boardriders clubs of NZ, teams will fight to claim national provincial honours and serious bragging rights, according to Bay Boardriders president James Jacobs.

With numerous NZ titles amongst the team, James says they all present a threat to their competition.

Competing in the open men's division is Jack Hinton and Levi Stewart. Jack, a previous top NZ Junior Surfer, is 'explosive on the water” and 'one to look out for,” says James.

'One to look out for”, Jack is a previous top NZ Junior Surfer and is 'explosive on the water”.

'And Levi has just come back from the men's world qualifying series in Australia,” says James.

Anna Brock, in the women's division, is the reserve for the NZ Junior woman's team and is up in the NZ rankings for Under-18s and Open Women's categories, says James.

In the Junior category is Tao Mouldey, who SunLive ran a story on last week.

'[He is going to El Salvador with the Junior NZ team in May to compete in the worlds,” says James.

And last, but not least, James says Owen Barnes is 'a NZ legend of the sport” and will bring his decades' worth of know-how to the team in the Over-40 spot.

James also gives special mention to Kehu Butler, who is unavailable for the competition as he's competing in Gold Coast's World Surf League Challenger Series.

'If you want to be the top club in New Zealand, you can't just have one or two good surfers; you need to have a really good team of surfers,” says James
'In the Bay we are fortunate enough to have a large pool of nationally-recognised surfers to choose from.”

When it comes to the competition's ‘tag team' relay-style event, James says the team will get strategic.

'Teammates have a total of one hour to go out and catch three waves, each in succession, with the team's total points tallied to find an overall winner against the other clubs,” says James.

The team will work on their plan of attack once in Whangamata, with James saying: 'We don't want to give it away”.

The winning club will compete in the world's club competition in the Gold Coast in 2023.
'It's real exciting and a real big deal,” says James, who thanks Mount Maunganui New World for shouting the team's feed for the entire weekend.

Held on May 7-8, be sure to cheer on our surfers if you're in Whangamata.

May 8's action will be streamed live from 10.30am-3:30pm for viewing at: https://www.youtube.com/c/SkySportNext