An idea, a start...... and today: results…
After being a Surfing coach in the two Surf schools that exist in the district of Viana do Castelo and being a regular surfer from this area, the founder of ABC-SS (Rui Sá) realized the difficulties which the people face when they want to start Surfing, especially the younger ones. In fact, even having an excellent coastline for Surfing, the risks and dangers inherent to its practice are undeniable and going to the beach all year round is not that obvious and easy around here. Another aspect that he soon faced himself as a surfer was the lack of guiding when he decided to go on a competitive career. Observing well this district, until now we lack athletes of that stand apart in the Portuguese Surf Scene, even though we posses excellent training spots. We have some cases of excellent local surfers that never stood higher than that, even though they've showed the willingness to launch themselves in "higher flights", first of all because they didn't have the support of the local entities that regulate Surfing and, when they would go out there by themselves, they faced enormous difficulties, as much at the preparation level as financial one. Therefore, the ABC-SS project, surfaced from the idea of a Surfing athlete in giving to its successors, the opportunities he didn't have himself and to the other surfers in general the ability to practice their sport using to advantage and maximizing all the excellent resources for Surfing that the coastline of this district has to their disposal.
In July 2007 we started the Viana Grommet Project (PVG) with the intent of giving surf lessons, training sessions and support to the youngsters of the district of Viana do Castelo, at attractive fees, so that they can surf all year long. In 2008 we started to take these young surfers to the National Junior Tour, having right away an athlete in the under 14 Top 16. During the following 3 years we where the only school in the Minho region with surfers in this tour (fact that remains unchanged until now) and young surfers from Oporto started to take notice in the Viana Grom's results and soon joined our ranks.
Due to this, we started with Northern Athlete Management (NAM) by late 2009, an innovative service of carreer management and high performance training in Portugal's northern regions, which was joined by local junior standout Sebastião "Sebas" Furtado and Sweden finest Junior Timothy Latte.
Also in 2009, we've started to put toghether some events. The first being the 3rd venue of the Norther Surf Tour, in which we associated to other surf schools and surf associations to create the first real surf tour in the north of Portugal (from Aveiro to Caminha). We also started the first celebration of the International Surfing Day in 201. At last, in 2011 we organized the first beach cleaning at Afife Beach, in the Surfrider Foundation program Ocean Initiatives.
Today, ABC-SS as coached several Surfers and Athletes, that started properly in a school with a proven method and as a result have surfing as a part of their lifes... Like the missed Andy Irons (3x World Champion) said: "That first wave is the reason why I think everyone keeps coming back. It's like anything... if you didn't like it the first time, you're not going back and do it again. (...) With Surfing, if you catch a wave you're hooked, right then and there!!!"...
