THE Jamaica Surfing Association’s annual professional surfing contest, the ‘Makka Pro’, is promising to be one of the best in its nine-year history.

It is slated for July 20-26 at Southaven, Yallahs, St Thomas.

With a purse of over a million Jamaican dollars in cash and prizes, the event is expected to attract top pro surfers from around the Caribbean and the region. With international pro surfers already slated to arrive from Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, as well as the east and west coasts of the USA, Jamaica’s top-tier watermen are in training to defend Jamaica’s surfing honour, and the sea has been cooperating over the past six weeks with continuous overhead surf for them to work with.

The event will see competition in three divisions — open, Under-21, and women’s. There is a cap of 24 entries for the open division, 16 for the juniors, and eight for the women’s. There will also be an “expression session” where prizes will be given out for best manoeuvre.

The standard of Jamaican surfing has improved dramatically over the past five years as young Jamaicans get access to better equipment. Young Jamaican surfers are now sponsored athletes within the international surfing industry and as a result of this and the exposure that the Makka Pro brings, Jamaica is now recognised as a legitimate surfing destination with incredible waves.

This all sets the stage for this year’s event and with the likes of the Sports Development Foundation, Jamaica Sport, ATL VW, Korna King and Flip Skateboards, as well as a number of media houses all helping out, it has made things better this year.

“The sponsors didn’t start coming in until very late in the effort, but we are very grateful nonetheless. We have a budget that we can work with even though it is tight and time is short this is our ninth year doing this, so we should be able to pull it off.

“We work with the Southaven Citizens Association every year and try to make the event one for the whole community and now it has become arguably the largest event in the parish of St Thomas,” said JSA president Billy Wilmot.

The 2015 Makka Pro will be the proving ground this year and all roads will lead to Southaven, Yallahs, St Thomas, Jamaica, where all on hand shall witness the crowning of the 2015 Makka Pro champions.