High Performance

Cowaramup Bay Boardriders began in 2010, and by 2021, we became Australia’s top performing club at the 2021 Yeti National Junior Surfing Titles.  Surfing WA has even touted several of our club members as future WSL and Olympic hopefuls.

Inclusivity

We have over 90 active junior members aged under 18 years, living in the Augusta/Margaret River Shire region. Our members range from young kids just learning to surf to Junior Surfing National Champions.

We are one of the only junior boardrider clubs in Australia to have equal numbers of male and female surfing members.  This is due to several initiatives, including:

• The Salty Sisters – a non-competitive arm that holds fun surfing sessions for girls.
• A novice division for those just learning to surf, comprised of around 50/50 male and female.
• Our annual fun foamie day, where the only objective is fun.
• A club camp, where we develop a stronger sense of belonging and community feel.

Becoming Good Humans

This year our club introduced a ‘teams’ system that not only rewards our members for good surfing, but also rewards our members for good sportsmanship and volunteering.

 

Each event we hand out prizes to kids who were particularly helpful or showed good sportsmanship.

 

We all love the beach and spend a lot of time there, so it’s important that our kids learn to look after it.  Each year, we hold

• a beach clean-up day after the WSL Margaret River Pro
• a dune re-vegetation day (that we participate in).

Building Our Mental Health

Over the last few years our club and community have tragically lost some dearly loved members.

 

These deaths have rocked our club like nothing else and members of our community are still suffering. We want to continue to help and support our current and former members that are impacted by these tragedies. We want to use our networks to reach out to others who may not belong to our club. And we need to do it in an educated and appropriate way.

 

Working with local SW suicide and mental health experts, we’ve already conducted several mental health activities, such as a teenage boys night with BeyondBlue speaker, Sean Allen.  Several of our committee members have also received training in suicide and mental health.

 

Our club also hosts the Gracetown Grommets, a memorial contest in memory of the nine lives lost in the Gracetown tragedy.  Some of our club member have a very close connection to this tragedy (including some family members).