The RA Girls Surf Show


WCT shortboard surfers, Rebecca Woods and Amee Donohoe, have taken on the daunting but wonderful task of organising and running a new surf event for women, The RA Girls Surf Show. This event will be running from 20-22nd January on Copcabana/McMaster's Beach on the Central Coast of NSW, so if you're in the vicinity head along.

The Brian Hilton RA Show aims to inspire, encourage and enable females to take on the world in a safe and fun environment. It also has aligned with environmental organisation Take 3 to bring awareness to preserving our amazing Ocean environment and protecting it from the many plastics and pollutants which enter our waterways. Take three for the Sea!

The RA Girls Surf Show with over $15 000 worth of cash (one of the only female events to offer cash in Australia) and ... aims to encourage more females to get a taste of the lifestyle that has provided them with the careers and opportunities they have enjoyed over the last decade. The event will also provide a fun and interactive mobile weekend of summer fun from Copacabana to Macmasters, with the local communities that have supported them so well.

The RA Girls Surf Show has eight major divisions ranging from under 12 Girls up to Master’s (over 38’s) as well as a Bodyboarding and Longboard division.

The weekend will provide plenty of the entertainment alongside the surfing event including market stalls, skateboarding clinics, beach games, surf lessons, Saturday and Sunday lawn/surfclub drinks, live music, morning yoga and a wrap up party presentation.

Organising and being responsible for events like this is no small task, so I'm really impressed by Rebecca and Amee's efforts and commitment to the RA Girls Surf Show. With withdrawn sponsorship for women's events leading to them being cancelled, the efforts of women like Rebecca and Amee are increasingly important for women's competitive surfing. The other consequence of this is that it creates opportunities for women to enter into more organisational and leadership roles within the competitive surfing community, allowing them to create and run surf comps in their own ways. Perhaps it will lead to women's events being separate and self-sustaining away from the men's, and with different kinds of sponsorship outside of the surf industry (eg. Beachley Classic) that are potentially, more sustainable.

Women like Rebecca Woods and Amee Donohoe are key to the ways that women's competitive surfing will continue to grow and develop, and even more importantly, create new opportunities for other women. Projects like RA are inspiring and deserve muchos support and congratulations.


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