Monday 24 February 2014: Newcastle City Council Boardriders have won the Michilis SurfAid Cup in half-metre (two foot) surf at Dixon Park, Newcastle, with 16 corporate teams raising $52,000 for humanitarian organisation SurfAid.

Beilby Consulting won the fundraising trophy by collecting more than $7,000 and their East Coast manager, Ben Hainsworth, who is also a committee member of the Hunter Business Boardriders, said they were delighted to support SurfAid. “It’s an awesome reflection of local community support for international humanitarian initiatives and we are very proud to be able to help,” Hainsworth said.

A five-man tag team format, the Michilis SurfAid Cup is part of Surfest and all the teams pick a pro surfer or legend to join their fundraising team.

The final came down to the dying seconds and the Council Boardriders narrowly defeated Sanbah Surf by 68.43 – 68.20, with NIB Health Funds (53.60) third and Coffey with Friends (37.07) fourth.

The Newcastle CC Boardriders team was Dwayne Jefferson, Daniel Masson, Mick Body and Jed Cook, and they selected Teale Vanner, from South Australia, as their pro surfer.

Council spokesperson Dwayne Jefferson said it was great to win after making the semi-finals last year. “The main thing is we raise a lot of money for SurfAid. It’s all for a good cause,” Jefferson said.

The other placings were: Cerretti Developments and Shaw Gidley (equal 5th), Lawler and Orica (equal 7th), Custom Web Cruisers, Accountants Stockbrokers Planners, Pipelining and Michilis (equal 9th) and SSS, Beilby Consulting, Mullane and Bilbie Dan Solicitors (equal 13th).

Pro surfers who generously donated their time and skills to the event were two-time ASP world champion Tom Carroll, local Newcastle legends Matt Hoy and Luke Egan, Thruster-inventor Simon Anderson, Tom Whitaker, Mark Mathews, Dan Ross and local surfers Drew Courtney, Ryan Callinan, Justin Lee, Jackson Baker, Travis Lynch, Michael Spencer, New Zealand’s Billy Stairmand and USA’s Ryan Ragan.

Mark and Tom Michilis, directors of Michilis Pty Limited, said they were proud to sponsor this year’s SurfAid Cup Newcastle. Michilis is a local, Australian-owned company that is celebrating 50 years in the construction industry this year and they also entered a team. “We are extremely stoked to support SurfAid in this capacity,” Mark and Tom said.

You can still support the teams here:

https://give.everydayhero.com/au/surfaid-cup-newcastle-2014

With Michilis as naming rights sponsor, supporting sponsors for the Michilis SurfAid Cup were:  Surfest, Hunter Business Boardriders, Beach Hotel Merewether, Subway, Jirsch Sutherland, Coastalwatch and Surfing World.

Homepage photo: Charlie Hardy

For further information:

Kirk Willcox
SurfAid Marketing/Communications Director
E: [email protected]
M: +61 407 063 829

ABOUT SURFAID

The mission of SurfAid, a non-profit humanitarian organisation, is to improve the health, wellbeing and self-reliance of people living in isolated regions connected to us through surfing.

SurfAid’s health programs involve education in nutrition, hygiene, healthy environments and disease prevention - including mosquito net distribution.

SurfAid has built an award-winning capacity in emergency preparedness and has delivered five emergency response programs following major disasters, including the Boxing Day 2004 tsunami and the October 2010 Mentawai tsunami.

www.surfaid.org