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Posted on Tuesday May 11th 2010 at 10:25 a.m.
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Scheduling an ASP event in a classic location during prime Autumn season in New Zealand sets the scene for an epic event, especially with strong weather tems and large swells already pushing through the Tasman seas and organizers are optimistic the famed left hand point break will provide great waves, particularly for the coming weekends finals.
"We are excited to welcome back to the Australasian Pro Junior Series the Billabong Pro Junior in New Zealand," said ASP Australasia's Tour manager Dane Jordan.
"The iconic location at Manu Bay really adds quality to our circuit and at this stage of the season these surfers are vying to qualify for the inaugural ASP World Junior Championship events and this week's event will be vital to their hopes with a lot at stake it's ideal to be running in a quality wave location.
"The ASP Australasian Junior Series has three overseas offshore island events being Tahiti, North Island New Zealand for this event and then there's the Billabong Pro Junior at Keramas in Indonesia.
"These are all superb high quality wave events and full credit to Billabong who have maintained and tweaked their long term commitment to Pro Junior surfing in this region to stage two of these three events at Keramas and Raglan," added Jordan.
The Pro Junior Men's and Women's field is headed by Dean Bowen (Sth Coast NSW) and Ellie Jean Coffee (Crescent Head/NSW).
Both goofy foot surfers they will be ideally suited to the perfect left breaking point waves at Raglan.
New Zealand surfers will obviously be extremely hard to beat, particularly in their familiar waters with Matt Hewitt (Mt Maunganui/NZ) and young Sarah Mason (Gisborne/now based near Australia's Gold Coast), both super exciting emerging talents and very capable of winning this event in their home country.
The event is on Thursday and runs through to Sunday.