It was not until her friends started chairing Elle Clayton-Brown up the beach that the Corlette surfer realised she had won the under-16 Girls Billabong Oz Grom Cup in Coffs Harbour.
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It was a breakthrough win for the 15-year-old, who has made plenty of junior finals around the country.
“I’d been working pretty hard leading up to the event and it just feels good for it to finally pay off,” Clayton-Brown said.
“It’s a great feeling, being chaired up the beach.”
The Bay Area boardrider outclassed Kingscliff’s Kelly O’Callaghan, Currumbin’s Shaye Leeuwendal and Dee Why’s Anne Dos-Santos in the four-person final on April 22.
“The final was good. I got a couple of good scoring waves at the start,” Clayton-Brown said.
“I got a seven and the other highest score was six. I couldn’t really hear anything for the whole of the final but I knew I was in the lead. I wasn’t too sure if I’d won until my friend said, ‘I’ll chair you up the beach’.”
Clayton-Brown opened her campaign four days earlier and progressed through the early rounds with some high scores.
She was second in the quarter-finals then won her semi-final and felt “I had momentum through to the final”.
“The conditions were pretty tricky in the final; there were a lot of close-outs, but if you picked the right one you got a nice wall,” the natural-footer said.
Surfing Newcastle junior development officer David Voyzey said Clayton-Brown was among the country’s emerging crop of surfing talent.
“This is a huge achievement for one of the Bay’s home-grown juniors,” Voyzey said.
“The Billabong Oz Grom Cup is one of the biggest junior competitions in Australia. It takes a lot more than just talent to win a competition like this.
“Elle has proven that with the right attitude, discipline and a commitment to training, anything is possible.”
The Port Stephens teenager said the win would provide a “confidence boost” heading into her next event, the Subway Pro Junior on the Gold Coast next month.
Clayton-Brown will go up against Australia’s best surfers aged 18 and under on May 6 and 7. Her best result in a Pro Junior is ninth.
“In those ones I’m still getting experience,” she said. “If you make it through one or two rounds, you’ve done good because I’ve still got heaps of years in this age group, so I’m just focusing on trying to get better.”
