Chris Den­nis took home the award for "Surfer of the Year" at the Surf­ing As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T prize giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny for T&T ath­letes who com­pet­ed on the lo­cal cir­cuit last year.

The event which took place on Jan­u­ary 19 at Blue Range park in Diego Mar­tin, which saw the sup­port of surfers from all over the coun­try.

Den­nis was al­so one of two surfers, who were recog­nised for their Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vice in the vil­lage of Ba­lan­dra on the North East coast. The oth­er was Jesse Jarvis.

The event al­so show­cased lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al surf­ing films, one in par­tic­u­lar, a film high­light­ing the work of In­ter­na­tion­al Ac­tion ap­par­el brand “Vans” along­side the South African “Waves for change" Char­i­ty.

Last year, “Vans” teamed up with lo­cal surfer Den­nis to arrange a board dri­ve on the West­ern and East­ern coast of the US which re­sult­ed in over 200 surf­boards be­ing de­liv­ered to T&T and dis­trib­uted to the young surfers in the coastal vil­lages of T&T.

Prizes were al­so award­ed to the surfers in their re­spec­tive cat­e­gories in­clud­ing Craig De Fre­itas cop­ping the top award in the men's open di­vi­sion, Oba Lewis al­so took the first place in the U14 and U-18 cat­e­go­ry and Lud­mil­la Gun­ther was topped in the Un­der-12 mixed and U-14 girls cat­e­gories.

The surf­ing as­so­ci­a­tion used the oc­ca­sion to thank all of its spon­sors who con­tin­ue to keep the sport grow­ing. They are Mo­bil 1 TT, Car­go Con­sol­ida­tors Ltd, NL­CB, Gatorade, V8, Moun­tain Dew, Dick­ies and Mechanix Wear.

Spe­cial men­tion was al­so made to North Eleven, Mario’s Piz­za Lim­it­ed, Dreamy Creamy Ice Cream, Growl­ing Don­key BBQ, Red Stripe Beer, T&T Print­ing Works, Paria Pub­lish­ing, Blue Range Com­mu­ni­ty and Vanes­sa Jod­han, who made the prize giv­ing a suc­cess.