Ron Lane
For the Noosa Heads Surf Life Saving Club surf sports team, it was indeed a good weekend.
Competing in the board riding events at Alexandra Headlands, the Noosa team put in their best performance in years to come home topping the overall points, making their team winners of the Queensland Championship. Noosa finished with 96 points with Maroochydore second with 89 points and host club Alex, third with 77.
Under the leadership of team captain Jack Lewis, the boardies are going from strength to strength, and it is pleasing to see that the team events cover all groups from the nippers through seniors and on to the masters.
The guidance and help that masters can pass on to the youth is indeed worth its weight in gold, in particular in times of big surf competition. To get words of advice from those who have been there and done it is often the difference between winning and losing.
In the team were seven members having their first experience and their performance was good. A big asset is the fact that Kirra Molnar, who is the teams’ world tour WSL athletic/coach and takes sessions for all abilities and ages, is part of the membership through the club. If members are keen to compete at state and/or Aussies, or just improve their surfing capabilities, just step forward and join the ranks.
A good performance saw both Kirra and Jack come home with medals.
Also, it was interesting to see the Marsh brother and sister team of Taj and Kaya competing and doing well. Recently we saw these two young athletes winning medals in weightlifting at state level.
The medal tally throughout the carnival was exceptional. They did their club proud.
Over at Maroochydore, the Summer of Surf Carnival sponsored by Murphy Builders, Noosa team was competing in another two- day carnival.
This saw them finish in eighth place overall, in what coach Darren Mercer classed as very trying conditions.
In the women’s open ski Jordie Mercer finished in fourth place after leading the ladies’ ski almost to the finish, where she was caught by others on a runner. Electra Outram finished in third place in the open board.
In the blue ribbon events, the Taplin Relays, Noosa had four teams competing, two in the open men’s, three-man Taplin, one in three-women Taplin and one in the six persons open mixed Taplin.
Despite not coming home with a medal it was good to see Noosa compete in these Taplin as it covers three disciplines, swim, board and ski. This shows depth amongst the competitors and creates a good build up for future carnivals.
But for this carnival, the top performance came from the beach competitor Kai Thompson. In the open beach sprint, he finished second and, in the beach flags open, he finished third. Team mate Liam Fell was fourth.
Despite being only 19, Kai is consistently mixing it with the big boys. He recently represented Noosa in the Queensland Super Surf League Team in a major carnival at North Bondi with equally outstanding results, definitely showing up as a super star in the beach events. With Thompson on the beach and Electra Outram on the water performing as they are, things are looking good amongst our young.
In the boat section, Noosa was again very busy competing on Saturday at Mooloolaba in windy conditions for state selection. Noosa was represented by one crew, the Bandits, but did not make the finals.
Sunday Noosa had four crews competing in round two of the Queensland Cup again at Mooloolaba. The racing was a true test of fitness with a course of 750m in flat conditions. All crews performed well on the day with standout performances by the u/19 males, the Roosters, who finished third and the u/19 females, the Tweeties finishing fourth in their final.
Next carnival will be in a week at Dickies Beach and two weeks later will be the Australian Surf Rowers League (ASRL) at Elouera NSW. The ASRL carnivals are amongst Australia’s biggest and the competition is always top shelf so we wish Noosa good luck.
