The world of sport just took a key step toward gender equality, and it looks like the Kings County setting of Lemoore had something to do with it.

The World Surf League announced today it will award equal prize money to male and female athletes for every competition it controls beginning in 2019.

That makes it the first and only U.S.-based global sports league, and among the first internationally, to achieve prize money equality, according to a news release.

The setting for this announcement was in Lemoore at the Surf Ranch, the artificial wave facility that has captured the surfing industry’s imagination and drawn celebrity visitors including NFL quarterback Drew Brees, musician Eddie Vedder, actor Chris Hemsworth and extreme sports stars Tony Hawk and Shaun White.

Some of the head honchos in surfing are in Lemoore this week ahead of its second public tournament, the 2018 Surf Ranch Pro, which begins Friday and features a concert from blink-182.

This development seems to be a significant step in bringing pay equality to professional sports, and how neat is it to think it happened in our neck of the woods?