Bronson Primmer and Jesse Trafford are Hawke's Bay's big hopes in the Backdoor BayBash surfing event which will be staged at Waimarama this weekend.
Primmer, a Havelock North premier club rugby player, upstaged more established Hawke's Bay surfers Jeremy Evans and Ben Hazelwood with his semifinal finish during last year's second edition of the annual event at the same venue. Trafford was one of the Bay's top juniors five years ago and is starting to take the sport seriously again according to Surfing New Zealand spokesman Ben Kennings who hasn't ruled out possible late entries from Evans and Hazelwood.
This weekend's combined New Zealand Pro Series and Grom Series event has secured more than 100 entries across seven divisions. Entrants include a number of New Zealand representative surfers who are back from competing overseas.
The open men's division will see three New Zealand team members compete with Mount Maunganui's Matt Hewitt the top seed. Hewitt, Raglan's Taylor Hutchison and Piha's Zen Wallis represented New Zealand at the ISA World Surfing Games in Costa Rica in August and are also all ranked in the top 10 of the ratings.
Fellow New Zealand dual representative Raiha Ensor of Mount Maunganui will spearhead the open women's division and she will be joined by junior representative Britt Kindred of Muriwai in the under-20 division.