THERE’S been heightened enthusiasm around Woolgoolga surf club in the weeks and months leading up to the 2025 NSW Country Championships at Warilla Barrack Point surf club, with the North Coast club eyeing a further jump this year on the overall point score. From ninth, to seventh and up one more place to sixth over the past three editions of the Championships, Woopi has slowly and steadily grown its competing force in both skill and size.

Clubs from outside the Hunter to Illawarra belt will converge on the South Coast for three days of competition from this Friday, 24-26 January, bringing the best regional NSW athletes together to test their skills.

The NSW Country Championships is second only to the NSW Surf Life Saving Championships in size, with around 1,000 competitors, 200 officials and around 4,000 spectators expected across the three days of competition.

Woolgoolga will hit the beach at Warilla this weekend with a similar size squad to the one that fell narrowly short of breaking into the top five last year, but with another year of training and development under their belts, there’s belief around the club that they could continue to climb the point score ladder.

“It has been thrown around definitely, and we’re aiming for something like that for sure (a top five finish),” said Junior Activities Coordinator Karley Pepper.

“The focus for us this year really has been building teams and trying to put as many teams as possible in the competition events.

“The individual events run themselves, so we’ve been doing a lot of work around the team events at training.”

There was no, or at least very little, rest for the wicked at Woolgoolga, with training sessions a key part of the Christmas holidays for the club and keeping the kids active and engaged.

“We didn’t want to give them too much, because it’s their holidays too, but on the flipside, I know that some kids get to a point where they want something to do, so having those training sessions offered them that,” Karley said.

“We definitely didn’t decrease anything, we had a week over Christmas where we didn’t really train at all, but we’ve been back strong since then and the kids that have been going have been coming in big numbers.

“The first weekend of January we had a teams’ carnival at our club which was also our first Nippers back, and it was great for reestablishing those skills and practicing the important parts of team activities.”

There’s also plenty of excitement building around an event Woolgoolga will take part in for the first time in many years – a youth March Past team has been working hard at one of the most iconic and storied events in the movement.

“We’re really excited to have pulled together a March Past team for the first year in what has really been a long, long time,” Karley said.

“It’s all just kind of just started recently so it will be interesting to see how they go.

“Some of these Nippers would never have seen one, so it’s going to be a lot of fun I think.”