A new board helped, but the 14-year-old also admitted she learned a lot from her fourth-place finish in the under-16s girls final of the Oz Grom Cup at Coffs Harbour.

"I didn't have long to get comfortable with it but usually with new boards it takes a couple of weeks, but it felt natural which showed through my result," she said.

More of a settled mentality during the competition also contributed to her strong result.

"Usually in comps I stress out and take off on terrible waves or choose bad waves but in this comp everything felt like it clicked a bit more," she said.

"I selected the better waves than usual and that paid off. I didn't get too many waves in my heats, but you only need two so that was enough."

Enfield conceded she probably saved her worst performance for the final although there was always next year.

"I had a complete shocker in the final; I don't know what happened but nothing worked out," she said.

"My wave selection went downhill for the first time in the comp so that was really annoying but you can only learn from that

"If I picked the better waves and surfed how I was surfing earlier I could have done better, but there's always next year."

She did set a goal of a quarter-final finish at the tournament so was satisfied to have progressed beyond that stage.

"I was going to be happy with a quarter-final finish because as you get older there's more rounds to get through to get to the final," she said.

"I definitely had no thought in my mind that I'd get that far in the comp, but it's the biggest comp I've done and my best result."

Enfield will return to the water in Newcastle for the regional titles in May at either Merewether or Bar Beach.

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