By RON LANE
ON SATURDAY the Noosa Heads Surf Life Saving Club, in keeping with its policy of community involvement, provided the water safety for the second annual Noosa Summer Swim.
A central figure for this event was Olympic legend and series ambassador Michael Klim – and happy to report that the event was, as last year, an outstanding success.
Noosa’s club captain Ian Widdicombe said: “We supported the event last year by supplying water safety patrols and were only too happy to do so again.
“This year we supplied three IRB crews plus our patrol boat.
“In the support group were 10 on rescue boards and two ski paddlers.
“The event went without a problem.”
With the ever-increasing workload for the IRB crews, training for new members is still ongoing.
At Noosa a further eight Noosa/Peregian members, seven men and one girl, are doing the necessary training that will qualify them to become members of the patrol teams.
On Saturday morning, the IRB racing teams which compete in the winter IRB carnivals, train at Noosa.
These carnivals are held at beaches on the Gold and Sunshine Coasts.
By competing at different beaches, they are exposed to all types of surf conditions.
The experience and self-confidence gained becomes invaluable for their summer patrol work which, on occasions, requires them to work in cyclonic seas.
The heavy competition season for the clubs is fast approaching. In readiness for this, coaches are getting as much competition as possible.
Sunshine started strong with success in the patrol and champion lifesaver events at Alex, and Noosa in keeping with past traditions sent teams to contest the Australia Day weekend big ones – the Sydney Manly and Freshwater Carnivals.
On Saturday, the surf at Manly was so big that some junior events were cancelled. However, several of the Noosa team contested their events and coach Darren Mercer was happy with the results.
On Sunday at Freshwater, Noosa was again active with good results. In particular among the younger members.
Last weekend Noosa travelled to Broadbeach to contest the Oceans 38 carnival.
Despite fielding a small team, Noosa again performed well with its junior members showing the way.
Competing in a moderate one-metre surf, the pleasing aspect was that their success came from all disciplines – board, ski, swim, iron man and Cameron relays.
The juniors are starting to perform well and just to name a few, Jasper and Electra Outram, Rhys Burrows, Alex Nolan, Cooper Williams, Emily Lethbridge and Riley Dixon are starting to draw attention.
This weekend in the boat section, Noosa will have four crews, masters, women’s open, under 23 men’s, and a reserves competing at Alexander Headlands in round three of the Beko Cup.
Boat sweep and coach David Tomba said: “With several carnivals cancelled there has not been enough competition, so we are looking forward to this weekend.
“With the state championships in March and the national titles in April we need all the competition we can get.”
It is a little known but established fact that our Australian surf clubs are regarded in some circles as a targeted organisation for Australian Defence Force recruitment.
The Sunshine Beach club will be losing three good members to the Australian Navy – Jordan and Morgan Twigger and Francis Wilson – all good, highly respected lifesavers.
These are the type of youth that the defence forces crave.
They have found that surf club trained recruits have fitness, team spirit and the ability to adapt to different circumstances and that patrol captains have leadership qualities.
It goes to show that we, in the lifesaving movement, must be doing a lot of things right.
