Student Surf Tour takes on Croyde

The third stage of the UK’s newest national surf competition, Student Surf Tour, is set to take place at Croyde Bay in North Devon this weekend.

The SST was originally set up in March 2011 by Joe Koa Briley, a third-year student at University College Falmouth, and went on to run its first event a few months later in June, where over 150 students attended.

“The aim of the SST is to bring universities in the UK together to surf competitively”, said Joe Koa. He added: “Surfing has never previously had its own national competitive league, so the SST brings more attention to surfing on a national scale.”

The league currently has 20 active universities competing at the events with both male and female teams. Over 11 of these universities including Aberystwyth, Manchester and Oxford Brookes have been confirmed to compete in the third leg of the competition being held on the 16-18 of March.

The SST takes place all over the country – from Cornwall to Scarborough, and so different universities will attend depending on the location. However the competition  has seen a rise in five or so “core regulars” who have attended all of the events so far.

“So far the first two legs of this season have taken place at Porthcawl in Wales and at Tolcarne in Cornwall, and were both a huge success, each getting bigger and better than the last. We’ve been getting a lot of coverage from UK surf media which is great- the more people who take part, the better.”

Following the succession of the first two SST events which took place in October 2011 and January 2012, the third stage in Croyde promises to be an interesting one, as Plymouth university are currently at the top of league tables with 760 points, shortly followed by Cardiff.