Carcavelos has received the finals of the Portuguese School Sport Surf championship, with 70 young athletes qualified for the three day competition.
School sport in Portugal is encouraged by a series of policies and partnerships that increase awareness about the benefits of sports and physical activities, gathering the country's schools around the purpose of providing their students with greater access to sports and competitions. Recognizing the merits of this particular sport and the Portuguese connection with the sea, the concept of a surf school in Portugal is becoming more and more important, but nothing shows more the importance of surfing than having the support and recognition of the government's agency responsible for school sports.
Back to Carcavelos and sunny May, the surf school sports championship was both an opportunity for these young surfers to increase their skill level, and the ideal time to get to know colleagues from all over the country.
Incresase of surf school's popularity
For João Ferreira, national coordinator of surf for Desporto Escolar, the championship was hard to manage because of the weather changing conditions that were verified during each of the three days of the competition. He also noted how surfing is becoming increasingly popular with schools, with several cities creating more surf learning centers in Portugal this year, namely Viana do Castelo, Porto, Peniche, Ericeira, Cascais, Caparica, Portimão and Armação de Pera. As a result, Portugal should be seeing a qualitative increase in the quality and number of surfers in years to come.
Full support for the initiative also came from the Portuguese Surf Federation and Rollei, which rewarded the winners with a camera at the Cascais city hall.
The five competitions were perhaps extraordinary because they crowned young surfers from the whole of the Portuguese territory, from Viana do Castelo in the North to Algarve in the South, although competitors from Lisbon and Algarve were clearly dominant, as these are areas in the Portuguese surf roadmap.
