Lilly Pollard is an Aussie female body boarder from Gerrigong, on the South Coast of NSW, competing on the IBA World Tour. Lilly’s dream is to win a world body boarding title.
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Lilly is five times Australian Pro Tour champion, well 5 ½ times Australian Pro Tour Champion actually, placing equal first on the tour last year despite missing several Australian events due to her IBA World Tour commitments.
Lilly is currently in fourth place on the IBA World Tour rankings, having so far placed 7th in Pipeline, Hawaii, and 3rd in Antofagasta, Chile, where she narrowly lost in the semi-final to fellow Australian competitor Emma Cobb who currently leads the race for the title.
The title race is wide open, indeed had the results of the semi-final been reversed, Lilly would currently be ranked as the tour leader.
Lilly has tirelessly promoted women’s body boarding both here in Australia, and internationally, for nearly 15 years and has earned the respect of both female and male participants for her fearless approach to her surfing, especially in some of the world’s biggest and knurliest surf breaks.
Along with her long standing commitment to promotion of the sport, ask anyone in the body boarding community, or trade media (in which she is frequently featured), and the word “legend” will probably be mentioned in the first sentence.
While Lilly is lucky to have several company sponsorships, sponsorship for individual female athletes is incredibly difficult to attain, and world tour events span Hawaii, Chile, Portugal, Brazil, Venezuela and Puerto Rico
Even if a competitor was to win every event on tour, the prize money would barely cover the air fares required to compete.
Lilly’s IBA tour trips are all currently self-funded, her credit card is basically maxed out, and she needs some extra funding to help get her to the next four events remaining on the 2013 IBA World Tour; in Portugal, Brazil, Venezuela and Puerto Rico.
Lilly works a full-time 8 hour job, five or six afternoons a week, but it’s not a very high paying job and her world tour commitments means she really only earns income for about 7 months each year.
The next tour date in Portugal is followed a week later by an event in Brazil, then a month later moves to Venezuela, and 3 weeks later to Puerto Rico.
It’s not financially practical for Lilly to return from Brazil and then fly back to the Central American tour events, especially with the recent 20% depreciation of the Aussie dollar and subsequently increased cost of air fares.
This means Lilly needs to sustain herself with accommodation and food during the lay over between the tour legs, again at increased cost due to the falling value of the dollar.
So Lilly has started a fundraiser to help offset her costs.
http://gogetfunding.com/project/boobies ... ct_detailsSo what’s this got to do with “boobs”?,
Well Lilly has a very distinct connection with “boobs”, having lost both her grandmothers to breast cancer, and nearly losing her mother Helen to the same disease as well.
So the National Breast Cancer Foundation.
http://www.nbcf.org.au and funding for much needed research to help prevent and cure breast cancer is a cause very close to her heart.
Any funds raised by Lilly’s fundraiser are to be split 50% to enable her to complete the IBA World Tour, and 50% of any funds raised are to go the National Breast Cancer Foundation.
And what if anything does this have to do with aquaponics?
Well like most professional athletes, Lilly is very conscious of her diet, and by preference maintains an “organic” diet where she can afford to do so.
I’ve been helping her out for a while by providing what vegetables I can from my aquaponics systems, and Lilly has gratefully acknowledged it, and the “aquaponics” concept on her Facebook, twitter and website blogs
So if anyone in the Backyard Aquaponics community is prepared to assist with any pledge, even a $1, then please add (BYAP) to your pledge name, and let’s see if we can collectively make the Backyard Aquaponics community the largest pledge block in her fund raiser, and perhaps promote some awareness of aquaponics amongst the body boarding community.
So whether you want to assist because you like body boarding, want to promote aquaponics awareness, or just plain like “boobs”.
Can we help Lilly out?
Backyard Aquaponics
