Meet the team of Cornwall's best surf coaches

Meet the Coaches

We take huge pride in the quality of coaching at the O'Neill Surf Academy.  A variety of qualifications and experience makes for an interesting team! And just how good are our coaches??? Well, why not ask the thousands of surfers we have taught over the past fifteen years - all of whom took home with them experience of a lifetime! Some have even taken it to the next level, visiting us regularly and enjoying with us the pleasure of riding waves!

REMEMBER TO CHECK OUT OUR BLOG to get the latest and best gossip from the beach. We're also on Facebook and Twitter making it easy for you to stay in touch with us and share your surfing experience with others.... you may even make some new surfing buddies along the way!

Ashleigh Bennetts

Ashleigh Bennetts:Academy Owner - BSA Level 3 Head Coach. Kids Dept' & Club Coach.

Ashleigh has high standards and great confidence when it comes to coaching, able to command the attention of a large group and loves coaching on a 1-1 basis. With  several years of coaching experience at the O'Neill Surf Academy and previous years with club and lifeguard experience. Ash is a BSA Level 3 coach and ISA judge. After taking over the running of the surf school from Pat and Sally over 2 years ago Ashleigh is developing the Academy with some exiting new changes for 2010 and beyond. Having spent this winter in Indonesia she'll be back at the academy meeting, greeting and teaching you all every day!  
SEE MORE PICTURES OF ASHLEIGH >>>

Curly Steve

Matty Stokes

Dan Rawsthorn

Dan Rawsthorn aka "Tractor": BSA Level 2 Coach & Surf Tour Manager

Dan has over 20 years experience surfing in the UK and abroad. His passion for surfing naturally extended to teaching others to surf, and he has been surf coaching for over 6 years. Dan rides his new retro fish most of the time, but enjoys riding a longboard when the surf is small!

Dan loves travelling around the world to surf good waves and runs all our West Coast Surfari Tours and Holidays.

In between his busy schedule of surfing the world's best waves, Dan can be found surfing in and around the Newquay beaches. With the birth of his gorgeous baby boy in 2009 Dan is now also a daddy!

SEE MORE PICTURES OF DAN >>>

Rachael Taylor

Rachael joined us for the 2009 season. Having previously worked at West Coast Surfari, we were delighted that Rachael wanted to come back and work with us. She’s a great coach and a great surfer….and has travelled around the world in recent years surfing some of the worlds best waves! She has great skills when it comes to teaching, at all levels, and is a tremendous asset to our team - helping us to give you the best surf lessons from some of the best coaches in the business!! She also competes in many of the women's shortboard competitions and posted some good scores this year.

She will be coaching daily at the Academy, and when not at the beach she will be joining our office team to tackle the mountains of paperwork! We are extremely proud to have 2 female coaches at the Academy and hope to pass the benefits onto our students! Rachael has recently been to Morocoo coaching and hopefully we'll catch up with her again in Spring 2010!

Katie Hookings