Hydralyte And Surfing Australia Up The Ante With New Partnership

CASUARINA/NSW(March 25th/2021): Hydralyte and Surfing Australia are excited to announce their partnership will continue through 2021 with the Hydralyte Sports Headstart Program and Cooper Chapman’s ‘Good Human Factory’, with a focus on junior surfing and grom’s mental health.

TheHydralyte Sports Headstart Program gives Australian groms a chance to experience the Surfing Australia High Performance Centre (HPC) and all its resources. Participants of the program are selected via online video submissions to Surfing Australia with judging being facilitated by some of Australia’s best surf coaches. This year will see 80 kids across 8 camps have the chance to participate.  

The all-new collaboration with The Good Human Factory is a welcome addition to the program and will help groms become ‘better’ versions of themselves through mental wellbeing exercises while improving their surfing by experiencing the Surfing Australia HPC (Hydralyte are a support partner of the HPC). 

Johnathan Biddle, General Manager of Hydralyte at Care Pharmaceuticals, says “we are so proud to build on the momentum of the Hydralyte Headstart Program in conjunction with our partner, Surfing Australia. This partnership enables not only a once in a lifetime opportunity for deserving groms to experience, but more importantly, now also helps support the mental health of our youth at a time where there is an increasing number of people impacted by mental health challenges. At Hydralyte our philosophy is all about making people feel better, on the inside and out.”

Hydralyte Ambassadors Reef Heazlewood and Zahli Kelly, both young professional surfers, are set to participate in the camps again this year, acting as mentors and surf companions to the participants.

Reef and Zahli understand the importance of both physical and mental wellbeing as professional surfers and are excited to continue helping groms on their own journeys. 

Surfing Australia CEO Chris Mater said:”  Surfing Australia can see Hydralyte is the perfect fit for initiatives like the Head Start Program and Cooper’s (Chapman) Good Human Factory ties in equally as well to this. We couldn’t be happier to continue our partnership moving forward in 2021!” 

Hydralyte and Surfing Australia have also teamed up with Jalaan Slabb, 16-year-old Indigenous surfboard designer and shaper of Jalaan Surfboards, to give one grom from each camp a uniquely designed board as part of a specialty award, for stand out participants who show great community spirit, look out for others, and have a fantastic attitude and willingness to learn.

Each participant selected for the program will receive a two-day camp at the Surfing Australia High Performance Centre as well as surf coaching, test surfboards, wave analysis, and mental wellbeing sessions. There will be 8 camps running throughout the year and Hydralyte Sports are simply looking for the best and most deserving kids – those with awesome attitudes, willingness to learn, team players and who want to get better at their surfing. 

All entries will be via video submission at www.surfingaustralia.com/headstart and we welcome juniors across Australia to get involved!