The Tushingham Team was well represented by all our student team riders, each of them delivering the goods once again! here is a summary of their results and a brief write up from each of the team!

Ollie Acton – SWA Freestyle Champion (2 years in a row)
1st in BUCS Team Racing with Solent

Jo Wright – Overall 1st Female (2 years in a row)
4th Freestyle (mixed with boys)
2nd female in BUCS racing

Louis Morris – Second BUCS individual Race 
1st Overall SWA race series
2nd Overall SWA (all events combined)

Sam Sills – 1st BUCS Race Champion 
1st in BUCS Team Racing with Solent

Ollie Acton - This year on the SWA Freestyle Tour has been the most epic year ever!  Starting with Aussie Kiss and then onto all the core competitions, no event has disappointed with universities around the country pulling out all the stop to make this year bigger and better than ever.

Determined to win the freestyle tour again, I went to every core event to try to claim the top prize of a brand new freestyle board.  We had a wide range of conditions on the tour this year, with good high wind freestyle at both Liverpool and Nottingham, tow-in at Aussie Kiss and a lightwind freestyle competition at Bristol.  These differing conditions have made it awesome for competition but also really difficult with more students entering with a really high sailing level! 

The final event of the series was the SWA Nationals at Calshot, with the wind not playing ball a lightwind freestyle competition was organised.  This style of competition means anyone on their day could have won, with Louis Morris, Adam Chubbock and Will Jones all having the ability to claim the top spot.  I grabbed my 4.2 Edge and spun and twisted just enough to impresses the judges and win the freestyle competition and claim the overall freestyle series!

The SWA tour and the Nationals were a great success for myself and Solent University.  I won the freestyle series again and along with Adam Chubbock and Sam Sills we achieved BUCS gold in the team racing and won the team racing series!  Thanks to Andy Biggs, Tushingham and Sport Solent for all their support throughout this year.

This was my last year as a student so I would like to say a final massive thank you to the SWA for running such amazing competitions over the past few years!  Cheers guys! 

Jo Wright - Nationals saw the conclusion of the SWA series and it certainly went off with a bang! I managed to borrow a raceboard for the BUCS racing on the saturday, which took place in a gentle 10-15 knots. I was also using Tushingham’s 7.0 X15 which worked well in the changeable winds. It was my first time on a race board, so the first couple of races were extremely sketchy! The footstrap positioning and huge mast track took a little getting used to but I really enjoyed the challenge and finished 2nd girl overall behind seasoned IMCO racer Kirsten O’Callaghan. Even managing to give the boys a bit of a run for their money in a few of the races!  The boat party lived up to expectations, everyone certainly seemed to be having a great time on the Saturday evening!

Sunday saw lighter winds, so we kicked the action off with the BUCS team racing (relay racing in teams of 3 from your uni). Exeter made it through our first heat into the final, but unfortunately we started too far down on the start line, so had to tackle everyone else’s dirty wind, as a result we only finished 6th but it was great fun. We all decided to stick with light wind freestyle format for the final round of the SWA freestyle series, as the wind never quite filled in. I was up against it in my first heat, with two to go through and both Ollie Acton and Louis Morris in my heat. I knew I had to pull it out the bag, so just pulled out everything that came to mind including light wind forwards, head dips and all manner of sail spinning! To my surprise it worked and I advanced through to the next round with Ollie. However, my combination of moves wasn’t quite enough to see me into the final. 

Overall for the year I tool 1st female – winning a much needed, brand new 5.2 Rock! Happy days! I also finished 4th overall in the freestyle with the boys, the level was much higher this year, so I was very happy with this result!

Louis Morris - Nationals this year was great. I really enjoyed the Individual racing. Congrats to Sam for winning, it was really close and tactical at times, we both made a couple of mistakes, but we pushed each other, and that all lead to the excitement! The freestyle didn’t go so well for me, I didn’t make some of my moves, and didn’t feel very relaxed, but never mind, I did much better in SWA freestyle series this year then I expected. As well as winning the SWA Race series for the second year, I also got joint 2nd with Ben Page from Southampton in the SWA Overall series (combined disciplines), well done to Adam Chubbock from Solent for winning that. Already can’t wait for Aussie Kiss in October! For a more detailed report from Louis head to his blog HERE

Unfortunately this was the last event for some of the students however we hope to see them at Beach Break Live and Aussie Kiss next year! Lets hope 2013/14 is just as successful!