Since 2006, the National Surfing Team of Costa Rica has dominated the Central American Surfing Championship, which just happened to be inaugurated in our country. Costa Rica has won every single Central American Championship, and the reigning World Champions have selected 22 surfers to extend supremacy in Nicaragua next week.

Next weekend, Playa Maderas in San Juan del Sur will welcome national surfing teams from across Central America, and the goal is clear: don’t let Costa Rica win again. Nonetheless, current national champion Jason Torres is ready to bring back another victory, and he believes his fellow team members are ready to do the same. In an interview with Carlos Brenes of the National Surfing Federation (Spanish initials: FEDESURF), Mr. Torres explained:

I am thinking about going big, and this is my usual preparation. I want victory, but I also want the team to work together and bring back as many gold medals as possible. I am really stoked; thankfully, I just recovered from a knee injury. We are all going big.

In Costa Rica, the surfing team is affectionately known as “La Sele de Surf.” Most team members are familiar with Playa Maderas in Nicaragua, just north of the land border with Guanacaste; this is a point break that produces A-frames and long, glassy rights on a good day, although rip currents and choppy surf are also known to break up the sets and make the heats more challenging.

The Championship will start on Friday, December 4^th, but the team expects to reach Nicaragua a couple of days in advance so that they can train and get familiar with the break and the swells. The last time Costa Rica surfed as a national team in Nicaragua was for the World Surfing Games, where they ruled and brought back lots of hardware as current World Champions.