basketball players
The practice of sports is one of the most recommended activities to stay healthy. This truth was one of the many maxims that the educators of yesteryear learned - who came from the Normal Schools - teacher trainers, teachers of yesteryear.

And yet, with the limited means at their disposal, they strove to introduce the practice of sports. That was how, in the decades of the '30s, '40s and even the '50s, Pichilemu had a healthy boom in the practice of sports, other than soccer.

First in the public schools for girls and boys - whose ages were between 14, 15 and 16 years old, the older ones - and later, those same students, under the protection of the existing sports clubs, played basketball matches, already in stage more adult. They even received other teams from nearby cities.

Those clubs were the "Arturo Prat" Sports and Cultural Club and the "Unión Pichilemu" Sports Club.

In the main photograph that we present, the team corresponds to their school stage -supporters of both clubs- Olga Iturriaga Maturana, Norgia Trepat, Nelly Valdivia, NN, one of the Bradley Cerón sisters and Clarisa López Gaete.

Meanwhile, in the secondary photography, one can see -on the right- María Carreño, Ana López Gaete, Norma Álvarez Jorquera, Uberlinda Arias Cáceres, Bernardita Leyton Tobar.

Ramón Navarro Rojas (1979), is the greatest exponent of Pichilemu surfing to date, specialized in riding big waves around the world, a specialty that has allowed him to travel to several international championships, supported by various sponsors.

His career began at the age of 13 with a board and second-hand suits, becoming a surfer of projection in a short time, which he demonstrated in various national championships, becoming a champion of various versions.

A year before the end of the '90s, he decided to sell his board and travel with his friend and surfer Diego Medina, settling in California where he worked hard until he gathered resources and traveled to Hawaii, where along with meeting the legends of surfing and the culture of the island, known as the cradle of this sport, as he expressed to the press "on that trip he realized the importance of the place where he lived."

After a year, he returned to the country, where in parallel to continuing to compete in tournaments, he studies international cooking.

By the year 2001, thanks to his sporting achievements, Ramón became the first professional surfer in the country. And, the following year, of the fourteen championships in which he participated, he won no less than thirteen.

In 2004 he tamed "La Bestia" from Iquique, an 8-meter wave feared by those who arrive there. In 2006 he won the Pichilemu Ceremonial; and in 2009 he participates in the Eddie Aikau Championship of Hawaii, the largest big wave surfing contest in the world, obtaining a 5th place, by taking and surfing the biggest wave of the tournament.

Consolidated as a professional surfer, with important participations in tournaments both in the country and around the world, he becomes a leader in the field and a reference in environmental causes; he being one of the promoters of the creation of the Punta de Lobos Defense Committee, after this beach was declared a "World Surfing Reserve" by an American organization called Save the Waves.

In 2018, the municipality distinguished him with the title of "Illustrious Son", both for his sporting merits, and for being a true ambassador, proudly representing and carrying the name of Pichilemu and Chile around the world.