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Jamaica’s six-member Junior Team to the 2012 International Surfing Association (ISA) World Junior Surfing Championships (WJSC) in Panama finished in 26th place from the 31 attending nations. The event was won by surfing powerhouse nation of Hawaii.

“Twenty-sixth place from 31 nations may look like a lowly position but considering that we only fielded 6 of a possible 12 contestants, the result was commendable. The whole purpose of this year’s effort to attend the WJSC was to build our junior surfers, the majority of who are in the first of 2 years in their respective divisions” Said JSA president Billy Wilmot “We are very proud of their performances this year already, especially Elishama Beckford.

Elishama achieved a 57th place world amateur ranking, an improvement of 31 places over his seeding and Jamaica’s best individual result. The other under 16 surfers had mixed fortunes with Ivah Wilmot improving from 87 to 65, a jump of 22 places while young Javaun Brown fell 9 places from 88 to 97. The talented 13 year old Javaun was one of the youngest contestants at the event and has a lot of potential and with another 5 years of competition left in the ISA junior division will be a force to be reckoned with in the future.”

In the under 18 division, Jamaica’s 3 surfers were seeded 89, 90 and 91. All made it to the second round of the repercharge. Armani finished with an 81 world rank, an improvement of 8 places while Akeem Taylor and Garren Pryce improved on their seeding by 25 and 24 places with equal 65 place finishes.

Team Jamaica was sponsored by The Sports Development Foundation, Insight51 clothing, COPA Airlines, Xtrak deck pads and Magma wax.