The Northern Beaches will play host to the 2025 NSW Surf Life Saving Championships throughout this month.
Queenscliff and Shelly Beach will this weekend host the Age (Youth) Championships. Then, from 12 to 16 March 2025 the Masters, Open and Surf Boat Championships will run.
Events have already been held at Freshwater, but the Queenscliff leg of the comp officially launched yesterday, 6 March, when the U9 competitors joined the U10s as the first to hit the sand and surf on an action-packed program, if slightly shortened by wild conditions.
An abridged water program meant the U10s raced at a benign Shelly Beach to the south of primary host club, Queenscliff SLSC, where flat conditions meant some of the most fundamental skills of racing were on show.
Cooks Hill SLSC’s, Jonah Whiteman, had a day to remember, picking up the gold in a frantic finish to the U10 Male Board Race final ahead of caps from Wanda and Avoca Beach.
He later backed it up as the final leg of the now-State Champion Board Relay team from the Hunter-based club, charging up the beach with extreme focus all the way to the finish line to avenge a silver medal earned by the same three boys (Jonah, Lachlan Thompson and Gus Butler) last year.
Other results of note from the water included an impressively strong win for Yamba SLSC’s Cody Kratzmann in the U10 Male Swim, hometown hero, Ivy Aberline from Queenscliff taking out the U10 Female Board, while Coogee SLSC’s Cecilia Eerikainen, Chloe Hoiles and Ella Jenkin (who would later win the Swim Race) won the Board Relay.
On the sand, the same names made the biggest impression across the Flags and the Sprints – Shizella Thorne from Cronulla SLSC and Jack Vukovic of North Curl Curl SLSC sweeping both events for the females and males.
In the Relays, Wanda SLSC’s Denver Turner, Sophie Griffiths, Aria Moyle and Isabella King won the Female category and Queencliff won the Mixed Relay with Isla Willbourn-Trevett, Benjamin Hill, Verity O’Halloran and Issac Zhu.
Coogee was too strong in the U9 Male Beach Relay.
The Championships continues on Friday and into the weekend with U9s and U11s in the water at Shelly Beach, and the U10s showing their speed on the sand.
The 2025 NSW Surf Life Saving Championships will run between 6 to 9 March 2025 for the Age (Youth) Championships, and again from 12 to 16 March 2025 for the Masters, Open and Surf Boat Championships.
