Add another award to Chelsea Tuach’s already mounting list for 2011.
The 15-year-old surfing prodigy has received further acclaim in a year that has featured outstanding performances, having been honoured as the Barbados Olympic Association’s (BOA) Junior Female Athlete of the Year on Friday during the BOA’s annual Christmas awards dinner at Hilton Barbados.
It was the crowning achievement of a season that included titles in both the open ladies and under-18 girls’ categories of this year’s national championships.
This was after Tuach won all five events in the Open Women’s division of the Barbados Surfing Association’s Surfer of the Year Championship series, while taking three of the five competitions in the under-18 girls’ division to secure the overall championships in both categories.
But her wave of success hasn’t been limited to these shores.
In April, she placed fifth in the ROXY Women’s Pro of the Ron Jon Easter Surf Festival while competing in her first overseas competition in Cocoa Beach, Florida.
Then, just one month later, Tuach posted a ninth-place finish at the International Surfing Association’s World Junior Surfing Championships – the “Junior Olympics” of surfing – where 86 of the world’s best junior surfers descended on Punta Hermosa, Peru.
Tuach also became the only Barbadian to have qualified for the National Ripcurl Gromsearch final three years in a row after winning the New Smyrna event in America.
She also won the Women’s Pro event of the National Kidney Foundation’s Surf Festival held in Cocoa Beach, Florida for the second successive year, before becoming the highest female Bajan surfer ever at last month’s Pan American Surfing Games in Guadeloupe, where she was fifth. (PR/JM)