It was an excit­ing fin­ish to the domes­tic year of com­pe­ti­tion with the State Cham­pi­onships last week­end. The team had some great per­for­mances pick­ing up a num­ber of medals over the week­end. This was the cul­mi­na­tion of the State Cham­pi­onships for IRB, Pool, Cham­pion Life­saver, Belt Rac­ing and R&R. The Club fin­ished 5^th Over­all.

Image gallery at the bot­tom, thanks to Carlo Tenaglia, Dara Mills, Glenda Schulz, Louise Nuku.

Below is a review of each of the areas from the Team Man­agers.

Beachie Review – Carl Mills

The 2018 State champs for Mul­laloo beach com­peti­tors pro­vided some great results, the occa­sional injury, slight heart­break and plenty of real team spirit.

Sat­ur­day morn­ing saw some fan­tas­tic 2km beach run per­for­mances. Sil­ver to Ben Tick­ner and Ben Hil­len, Bronze to Jo-Anna Hay­ward, Ellie Mar­low and Heather Bythe­way – was a great way to start our com­pe­ti­tion. Corey Bartle, Zara Mar­tin and Dar­ren Bean-Han­ni­gan also pro­duced per­sonal bests in a great sign for the future.

Beach sprints and relays were up next. Cooper Schulz and Mitch Eady ran close fourths in their final, while our under 17 boys did really well to bring home bronze in their sprint relay. Our under 15 boys and under 17 girls were both unfor­tu­nately dis­qual­i­fied in their relays, how­ever, given injuries that the boys pushed through and last min­ute changes for the girls, the Club should be very proud of their efforts. Spe­cial thanks to Ellie Black and Sarah May for fill­ing in at the last min­ute.

Sun­day was all about the flags arena and Mitch Eady didn’t dis­ap­point his grow­ing tribe of fans. He fought all the way to the final two and just missed out, win­ning sil­ver in a great per­for­mance. A spe­cial men­tion regard­ing effort and appli­ca­tion must go to Aaron Gigney (4^th in under 17 flags) and Ellie Mar­low (7^th in under 17 flags). Aaron and Ellie are both super con­sis­tent with their train­ing. The enthu­si­asm they show for beach events is infec­tious.

The absolutely most pleas­ing part of the week­end was the team spirit and cama­raderie shown by our team. The week­end showed what a great beachie team we are begin­ning to grow. The future is so bright we may have to wear shades.

Surf Boats – Mark Donnelly/Stuart Clarke

So they say West­ern Aus­tralia is ‘Rot­tnest Lake’ for surf boat car­ni­vals? Not on Sun­day. The ex-cyclone swell came through in the morn­ing to pro­duce some of the most pow­er­ful and spec­tac­u­lar waves we’ve seen at Scar­bor­ough.

The Mul­laloo sweeps had a chat before­hand and decided to play the con­ser­v­a­tive game – that we’d pick our way out through the break and make wise deci­sions on the choice of waves to catch.

And it worked a treat – with all crews mak­ing safe jour­neys out and back (in warm-ups and races), plus picked up some fab­u­lous ‘bling’.

Our depth in the surf boat sec­tion was shown by the Bronze medal in the boat relay – three legs of men (Bar­racu­das – Peter Kennedy, Peter Hainsworth, Mathew Col­bourne, Jake Platt swept by Mark Don­nelly), women (Mar­lins – Rachel Green, Tamara Yujnovich, Elise Dag­nia, Helen Grimes swept by Stu­art Clarke) and U19 crews (Storm Troop­ers – Tyler Nuku, Cooper Schulz, Luke Tris­ton, Sean Coven­try swept by Stu­art Clarke).

There was a fab­u­lous State Champs debut by our two U19 Male crews – with the Stormtroop­ers win­ning Sil­ver (Tyler Nuku, Cooper Schulz, Luke Tris­ton, Sean Coven­try swept by Stu­art Clarke) and the Vikings win­ning Gold (James Col­bourne, Con­nor Mar­low, Caleb Palan­dri, Wes Thom­son swept by Richard Cal­non).

The u19 female cat­e­gory was can­celed due to the heavy con­di­tions. Hope­fully, our Neptune’s Daugh­ters will get an oppor­tu­nity to race if resched­uled.

All in all, it was a great effort from our sweeps and crews. Thanks Mau­reen Don­nelly for organ­is­ing us all on the beach. Well done.

Youth Area– Vicki Rasmussen/Frank Scullino

We have such a great group of youth at the Club, and many were at the State Cham­pi­onships over the week­end giv­ing their all. We had many com­peti­tors rep­re­sented in the finals which show we are devel­op­ing our depth again.

Our youth march­past team started the week­end for us with a rous­ing Sil­ver Medal for Har­riet, Ava, Ruby, Danielle, Aimee, Neve, Zara, Leah, Holly, Annika, India-Rose and Katie.

Some of the high­lights for the week­end included qual­i­fy­ing 4 teams in the U/15 Board relay final and we fin­ished 2^nd  with a sil­ver medal for Neve, Rosie and Leah. In our Board Res­cue, we had 2 teams make it through to the final out of 8, win­ning a sil­ver medal for Leah and Maisy.’Our Boys strug­gled a lit­tle bit, as we had mostly U14’s and com­pet­ing against the U15’s in the team events. They did extra­or­di­nar­ily well in a tough com­pet­i­tive group and it looks good for next sea­son when they will grow a lit­tle more against the oppo­si­tion. No medals this sea­son in the water arena, but some great efforts over­all. Many of the boys are devel­op­ing their skills and they will be back next sea­son stronger again.

Sun­day was another inter­est­ing day when much of the luck ran with com­peti­tors com­ing from behind to jag waves and come past the lead­ing com­peti­tors. There were so many of our com­peti­tors lead­ing only to be beaten at the end by waves from the back and end up with a 4^th with no bling to show for their efforts. So many tears! We did man­age a Bronze medal in the U14 Iron­woman – Maisy with Rosie and Leah fin­ish­ing 4^th and 5^th.

Women’s Area – Mandy Lee

These ladies are a credit to Mul­laloo with their enthu­si­asm and sup­port for each other – two under 19’s – Soraya Lee, Jo May­nard and 6 Under 17’s – Lillyan Rosich, Ellie Black, Sarah May, Darcey Brooks, Caitlin Knight, Asha McDon­ald-Razvi. They did well to com­bine and make up teams for almost every Under 17 and Under 19 team event held on Sat­ur­day, even sur­pris­ingly enter­ing an Under 17  female dou­ble ski team in the Under 19 event and com­ing away with a bronze medal – when they had never been on a dou­ble before and prob­a­bly couldn’t even reach the ped­als! We medalled every team event on Sat­ur­day in either the Under 17 or Under 19 cat­e­gories, or both, and often with more than half the under 19 team being made up of our Under 17’s.

Sun­day saw mostly indi­vid­ual events held, along with the tro­phy Taplin relay events. We were down a cou­ple of girls on Sun­day for these, and then with the amaz­ing con­di­tions, we lost another one – a dis­lo­cated shoul­der and an ambu­lance ride – but impres­sively Darcey still made it to the wind up on Sun­day night! Because of the depth of abil­ity we have in our women’s ranks and their will­ing­ness to have a go at most things, it was actu­ally no prob­lem chang­ing our teams around to meet the require­ment of com­pe­ti­tion when oth­ers were miss­ing.

Some very impres­sive indi­vid­ual races also came from every sin­gle one of these girls in large surf con­di­tions they had never expe­ri­enced before, cer­tainly not on the ski. Yes, there was car­nage in the Under 17 ski but there was no hes­i­ta­tion in these girls attempts to give it a go. In addi­tion to per­sonal achieve­ments rac­ing in these con­di­tions, we did claim more medals cul­mi­nat­ing in a very suc­cess­ful week­end. Thanks, ladies for being a plea­sure to hang with on the beach all week­end!

Men’s Area – Gayle Gould

With only a small team this year, like the women’s area, we had many of our com­peti­tors in the U17’s com­pet­ing up in U19’s and open events. Thank you to all those com­peti­tors who came along to com­pete and help out with teams.

The enthu­si­asm and com­mit­ment were absolutely fan­tas­tic from the team and Sat­ur­day we spent most of the day in team events pick­ing up a few medals along the way, includ­ing the Bronze in U17 Taplin with Ben Hil­len, Sam Dob­son and Jack Wilson and Sil­ver in U19 Board res­cue with Ben Hil­len and Harry Jones.

Sun­day was a very tough day with huge surf in a tough Arena. With mostly indi­vid­ual events it was going to be dif­fi­cult to win medals. How­ever, we had some excep­tional results includ­ing Sil­ver in the U21 Ski Race – Alex Baker and State Cham­pion for U17 Surf Race – Jack Wilson.

Officials & Water Safety – Sandy Clarke (Carnival Referee)

Mul­laloo was well rep­re­sented for this Cham­pi­onship. Thanks to our senior offi­cial Mark Hills (Emer­gency Ser­vices Offi­cer) and what a job Mark had par­tic­u­larly with the Sun­day con­di­tions! It was through the sup­port of a great team that the cham­pi­onships ran suc­cess­fully.

Thank you to our Club offi­cials coor­di­na­tor and offi­cial – Dawn Jones, our offi­cials – which in many cases cov­ered both days, Jes­per Ras­mussen, John Hil­len, Kathryn Red­den, Alison Ger­rard, Glenda Schulz, Marni Black, Cindy de Bom­ford and Terry Upston.

In the pow­er­craft area we had Jacqui Mac­Gre­gor – also assist­ing pow­er­craft – water safety car­ni­val coor­di­na­tion and Rob Young who drove both days as judge in boat – awe­some job! Thanks also Todd Bartle and Alis­tair Cook for com­plet­ing our Mul­laloo Water Safety ros­ter in IRBs and Sarah Greg­son and Kirsten Dob­son in the water.

For all of our com­peti­tors over the week­end, they never stopped try­ing and always gave their best for Mul­laloo SLSC. We look for­ward to the Aus­tralian Cham­pi­onships at Scar­bor­ough in a few weeks’ time.

Carlo Tenaglia – GM Surf­s­ports

© Andrew May­berry

What a jam packed 3 days of com­pe­ti­tion the Nip­per State Cham­pi­onships was!

Fri­day night had our ‘sand dancers’ sprint and flag in the evening, with a chilly breeze and moon­lit sky, our Nip­pers were in fine form. The Sat­ur­day surf con­di­tions left all the u10s wiped out for the day. Chal­leng­ing con­di­tions but we had some pretty deter­mined and skilled Nip­pers make their way through the pro­gram. All the talk up about a big Sun­day surf, we were relieved to see con­di­tions much more man­age­able. It was great that the u10s were able to com­plete their cham­pi­onships, albeit on the one day.

After 3 days of com­pe­ti­tion our Nip­pers ended up 5th by points and then com­bined with the points from the Pool Res­cue and R&R results, main­tained their posi­tion and are 5th over­all for the sea­son – well done.

Thank you to all the offi­cials, water safety, team man­agers and par­ent sup­port, the Nip­pers couldn’t have done it with­out you!

Andrew May­berry and Tony Bow­ers were kept busy over the 3 days tak­ing pho­tos of all the Nip­pers. Please sup­port their efforts, peruse their col­lec­tions and all are avail­able for pur­chase:

• Andrew May­berry Pho­tog­ra­phy Nip­per State images click here
• Tony Bow­ers Pho­tog­ra­phy Nip­per State images click here