15-year-old, Andrew Laverge is fairly new to longboard surfing and even though he has only been doing it for three months, he has taken to it like a duck to water.
A competent shortboarder, he is a dark horse in the under 16 category of the SA Longboard Surfing Championships, representing the Eden SS.
The stoked port Alfred local tries to spend as much time as he can in the water having fun. When he is not surfing short board or longboard with best buddy Kye Macgregor, they spend time bodysurfing heavy West Beach. They keep busy fishing, cycling and doing crazy teenage things like trying to ride car tubes in heaving surf and trying the latest skateboarding tricks.
He also gets involved in beach clean ups and cleaning snares from dune forests near the beach.
Andrew does not own his own longboard at the moment and borrows one from his surf coach and mentor David Macgregor of Shaka Surf School.
“I love the ocean,” he explains.
“We need to save it from pollution, without the ocean we are nothing.”
Andrew lives with his father, a fisherman, and knows how important it is to save the marine environment from pollution. His mother passed away several years ago and for Andrew, getting an education is a priority, as well as learning as much as he can from what he sees in the ocean around Port Alfred and everywhere he goes.
