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Monday, February 24, 2025

Surfing enriching living

by

20120515

Whether you've seen it on tele­vi­sion or ac­tu­al­ly been to an event, you must agree that those surfers rid­ing their bright­ly coloured boards over seem­ing­ly an­gry waves are ex­treme­ly cool. Surf­ing is a very phys­i­cal­ly chal­leng­ing, com­pet­i­tive sport. But it's not just for a priv­i­leged few, says new­ly ap­point­ed pres­i­dent of the Surf­ing As­so­ci­a­tion Che Lovelace. He's work­ing on mak­ing surf­ing seem more "in­clu­sive." He met with me last week for a cof­fee and con­ver­sa­tion and launched in­to a dis­cus­sion on surf­ing and some of the goals of the surf­ing as­so­ci­a­tion-most­ly geared to­ward de­vel­op­ment of the sport and youth in­volve­ment. He ad­mits that in the 1980s there weren't a lot of "coloured peo­ple" surf­ing, but adds: "That start­ed chang­ing with my gen­er­a­tion and now we have had cham­pi­on surfers in T&T come from di­verse back­grounds." Lovelace said a wide range of peo­ple are in­volved in surf­ing these days. "I have known peo­ple as young as ten and peo­ple as old as their ear­ly six­ties who surf," he said, adding that in T&T, un­like oth­er coun­tries, surf­ing was a male-dom­i­nat­ed sport. If it's still seen as the pre­serve of a few, that's be­cause, he says, "You might not see a lot of peo­ple surf­ing, be­cause as a sport it can be ex­treme­ly chal­leng­ing as you progress. "Rid­ing a board on waves is a very dif­fi­cult en­deav­our. There are learn­ing mo­ments when it can be straight­for­ward but it is a ma­jor chal­lenge. "The learn­ing curve is al­so so sharp that you have to take on a lot of fac­tors, so it hap­pens some­times that a lot of peo­ple will come and try surf­ing, but not pur­sue it to the next lev­el."

Lovelace be­gan surf­ing in his late teens, af­ter meet­ing friends from Port-of-Spain who were in­ter­est­ed in the sport. He said in those days surf­ing wasn't taught; if you want­ed to learn, you would do so by tri­al and er­ror. "Now if some­one wants to learn, they can prob­a­bly con­tact the surf­ing as­so­ci­a­tion and we can rec­om­mend an in­struc­tor," said Lovelace. There still aren't many cer­ti­fied in­struc­tors, though. He said of the ten cer­ti­fied in­struc­tors he knew of, on­ly a few were teach­ing. This is an­oth­er is­sue the as­so­ci­a­tion will tack­le. Lovelace has been in­volved in the as­so­ci­a­tion since its in­cep­tion more than 20 years ago. "The pre­vi­ous board was very good, They worked on reg­u­lar na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions and in­tro­duced the In­ter­na­tion­al Surf­ing Fes­ti­val," he said. The surf­ing fes­ti­val took place last week­end in To­co. He al­so spoke about a pi­lot pro­gramme launched by the as­so­ci­a­tion in 2010 which fo­cused on ex­pos­ing pri­ma­ry school stu­dents to surf­ing, es­pe­cial­ly chil­dren in coastal ar­eas. "Aside from find­ing good com­pet­i­tive surfers, we feel that there is a recre­ation­al and so­cial com­po­nent to surf­ing that would be vi­tal to young peo­ple," he said. In Trinidad, most surf­ing takes place on the North Coast, in ar­eas like To­co and Saly­bia.

Lovelace said in Trinidad peo­ple surf al­most every week­end, as the is­land has waves all year round, so peo­ple usu­al­ly just check the weath­er fore­cast and surf when they want to. "To­ba­go is dif­fer­ent, though. To­ba­go has a surf­ing sea­son, which is ac­tu­al­ly from Oc­to­ber to April," he ex­plained. Lovelace ad­mit­ted that though the ma­jor­i­ty of surfers come from city ar­eas, the best ones are usu­al­ly those who grew up near the beach. He gave Chris Den­nis from To­co as an ex­am­ple. A surf­board can range in price from US$400 to US$700. Lovelace added, how­ev­er, that pro­fes­sion­al surfers ben­e­fit from spon­sors for gear and equip­ment. "In T&T we have a few ad­vanced surfers that com­pete on an in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el. Be­sides my­self there is Chris Den­nis, Ja­son Ap­pari­cio, Allen Davis and some oth­ers." Lovelace said the surf­ing as­so­ci­a­tion usu­al­ly held one na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion a year, as well as the in­ter­na­tion­al surf­ing fes­ti­val. "Be­sides this, the In­ter­na­tion­al Surf­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (ISA) holds com­pe­ti­tions through­out the year and a lot of them have been in South Amer­i­ca re­cent­ly, so re­gion­al surfers can ben­e­fit from this." He says there are many as­pects to surf­ing that peo­ple are not aware of-com­pet­i­tive, so­cial and ther­a­peu­tic. Lovelace wants the as­so­ci­a­tion to be more ac­tive in en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues. "We should be guardians of the ocean. Surfers are clos­er to the wa­ter than most oth­er peo­ple. With fish­er­men, they are on a boat-we are half in, half out," He said the as­so­ci­a­tion was look­ing at ways to align it­self with en­vi­ron­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions. But most­ly he wants to get more peo­ple in­volved just for the sake of surf­ing. "It is one of those things you are bet­ter off for hav­ing tried," he said, de­scrib­ing the surfer's life as healthy and so­cial­ly con­scious. "Try­ing surf­ing, even if just once, can on­ly en­rich the process of liv­ing."


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