Coach plays a key role in World Team’s win in wave pool

VICTORIAN surfers Xavier Huxtable and Nikki van Dijk are achieving great results on the international stage.

And it’s not just the surfers making an impression.

Elite surfing coach and veteran surfer out at Bells and Winkipop, Cahill Bell-Warren, is beginning to attract attention on the coaching scene.

Bell-Warren does a lot of work on the women’s tour with van Dijk, Malia Manuel from Hawaii and Paige Hareb from New Zealand.

Hareb stood out recently when she surfed for the successful World Team, which won the inaugural Founders’ Cup in the wave pool at Lemoore, California.

Analysts were viewing the World Team as underdogs, largely due to perhaps the two required females in the team being Hareb and South Africa’s Bianca Buitendag.

It was generally felt that Stephanie Gilmore, Tyler Wright and Carissa Moore would dominate. And while they did surf really well, the two World female surfers performed exceptionally, in particular Hareb who used BellWarren’s services.

Hareb and Bell-Warren went to the pool as early as possible to make the most of training sessions. Hareb posted huge scores in every round.

Was it Bell-Warren’s influence? Many believe he gave serious feedback. The World Team knocked out Team Australia in the qualifying rounds, with Hareb a major performer.

It will be interesting to see where that success leads for Bell-Warren, but for certain more professional surfers are now enlisting elite coaches to push their performances.

Four-day forecast: Plenty of late autumn swells with wind and there’ll be no shortage of surf in the forecast period. Look for clean waves this morning and swells to 1.25m then increasing with onshore winds during the afternoon. Friday looks great with light variable winds and good waves on all reefs then smaller but clean fun waves right through the weekend.