After the recent completion of the third and final event of the 2015 SUPSA SA Wave Surfing Series in Cape Town the final national rankings for the 2015 season have been released by SUPSA. Competitors retain their two best scores from the three events, which started with the Coreban Summer Series held in December 2014 at Big Bay Bloubergstrand. This was followed by the HW Brokers Supdurbs Pro held in Durban in early July, followed by the UnderArmour SA SUP Wavechamps also held in Blouberg two weeks later.
Competitors were fortunate this year in that all three events were held in decent sized surf for a considerable portion of the time, allowing them to enjoy some great conditions along with some more challenging ones. This allowed the top competitors to showcase the full extent of the progression in their SUP surfing skills which the last couple of years has demanded.
The Open Men and Ladies divisions rankings are the major criteria used for selection of the SA Team to attend the ISA World Championships, and as usual they were very tightly contested, with the finalists in both divisions of the SA Champs all in with a chance of qualification until the final results were announced.
Justin Bing retains his number one SUP Wave position
In the end it was Coreban teammates Justin Bing and Tom King who claimed the coveted top 2 spots in the Open Mens rankings with 2.7 points each, with Justin retaining the number one position by virtue of his win in the SA Champs, which outranks the other events in the event of a tie. Brandon Ribbink was the third surfer to win an event which resulted in him finishing just behind the other two event winners. Two Juniors, Nick Walker and Matthew Maxwell, proved that the future of SUP surfing is in good hands by finishing in 4th and 5th position respectively.
New comer Roxy Davis is crowned Open Ladies Division Champion
The Open Ladies division was also a cliffhanger right until the end of the final heat of competition. Eventually it was relative newcomer to competitive Sup surfing, Roxy Davis, who walked away with the honours after being the most consistent surfer in the 3 contests, ahead of Tammy Robarts, Tarryn Kite and Penny Stemmet, all of whom have represented SA at previous ISA World Championships.
Grantley Read takes the Legends SUP Wave title
In the Legends Division, Grantley Read remained as consistent as ever to take the honours ahead of perennial competitor Gary van Rooyen, with Dave Maxwell and Deon Bosman filling out the placings.
In the Divas division Kim Duvenhage took the top spot followed by Angela Whittle and Sue Maxwell.
In the Junior Boys, Nick Walker made a clean sweep of the 3 events, with Matthew Maxwell runner up, and Kimon Dos Santos and Joshua Robertson claiming 3rd and 4th respectively in their final year in the Junior division. It was encouraging to see 24 entries in this division during the course of the 3 events, as well as the first separate Junior Girls division being run separately during SA Champs, which will hopefully be supported enough to be a permanent division in future.