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