By RON LANE
ANOTHER busy weekend for our surf lifesaving fraternity, with patrols as usual on our three beaches – Peregian, Sunshine and Noosa, state competition for Nippers at North Burleigh and fund-raising for kindred sporting clubs on Main Beach Noosa.
Once again, all patrol captains have reported an incident-free weekend.
While our Red and Yellow army was keeping our tourists safe on our beaches, our Nippers travelled to North Burleigh to contest the last carnival of the season, the Queensland Youth Surf Life Saving Championships.
This year a total of 1750 junior lifesavers representing clubs from Port Douglas through to the bottom of the Gold Coast competed, with 650 coming from the Sunshine Coast. The overall total is 110 up on last year, so this i good to see as it gives an indication as to the progress of the Nipper movement in Queensland.
Happy to report it was indeed a very successful carnival for both Noosa and Sunshine Beach.
Contesting age groups from Under 12 to Under 15, Noosa came home with a tally of 4 gold, 6 silver and 2 bronze medals.
For Sunshine it was also a successful carnival with their team finishing in fifth place overall in the state. Their tally of 6 gold, 10 silver and 7 bronze speaks volumes for their coaching panel. Perhaps the performance of the day came when, for the fifth year in a row, their boys board relay team, which starting together as Unde 11s, won the Under 15 gold medal.
With Sunshine being a small club, this is indeed an,outstanding result and we congratulate everyone involved.
Regarding the results of our clubs, the medal tallies take second place when you consider the conditions that our youth had to battle. Saturday was big and blue bottles were ever present. However, with a wind change on the Sunday the blues were absent but the conditions were still big. These conditions made it tough for all competitors, however their performance is a great indicator as to the fighting spirit of our young; and it speaks volumes for the future of lifesaving in Queensland.
Add to this the report that on two previous occasions, the high standard of good sportsmanship shown by two Noosa Youth teams was highly commended by officials. So the fighting spirit our two clubs at North Burleigh plus the good sportsmanship shown by all our youth, tells us that the administrators and coaches of our two clubs must be doing a lot of things right.
On Sunday from 2pm to 6pm the Noosa Surf Club sponsored the 4 Codes of Footy, a major fund-raising beach party. Held in the tents on Main Beach, courtesy of the Surf Festival, the purpose of this was to assist the Rugby Union, AFL, Soccer and Rugby League clubs in their fund-raising campaign.
With nibbles, beverages and entertainment, provided by the Tamworth award-winning Dennis Sisters, it was indeed a very successful occasion.
Anton Mogg, manager of the Surf Club and emcee for the occasion said in his welcome, “This is the first time that we have attempted such a function; so on behalf of our club thank you for your support. We are hoping to make this type of fund-raiser an annual event. It is our way of showing our thanks to the community for your support during our hard years of chook raffle fund-raisers. So once, again our thanks for your support. ”
All clubs were represented by officials and to start the afternoon an official from each club was asked to address the guests and give a preview of what lies ahead for their season. Good luck to all.
