PSC v PIBC Challenge

29 APRIL 2006

If you weren't there at the PSC and PIBC Challenge, you missed a classic.

It was a fantastic day from start to finish, both clubs got together for the first time in over 15 years to hold a club challenge held at the Woolamai in some of the best 3 to 5 ft contestable waves we've had in a long time.

The day involved surfing all divisions of the club including a Legends heat where we brought Paul Trigger in to help Skip out. Phillip Island got off to a good early start and we had to play catch up through out the day, overall most of the heats were very close with only a few heats not getting the waves needed to put us in the lead. At the end of the day Phillip Island had won the heats section of the contest. This left us with a big task of catching their score in the tag event. Our tag team surfed well and ended up doing the job on them in the hour-long event, matching their surfers all the way in each division.

We won the tag by a close margin but unfortunately it wasn't enough to catch the overall score. By winning the Tag we showed them that we can match it and come Surfing Vic's Teams Titles later in the year we will be ready to give it a real crack. The Tag event saw some great individual performances by our surfers in a very different format to the usual Surfing Vic tag teams event. We had one person from each division competing, so there were a few new inclusions into the team. Josh Hallam, Brooksy and Bella Hartley. Bella did us proud by doing what was required in the time she had. She is going to a big asset to the club in the years to come.


Our team was headed up by Andrew Hyde (Snr Men’s), and Harry (Snr Masters) then Skeeta (Open) and the ever reliable Scratch (Grand Masters), followed by Josh Hallam (Cadets) and Brooksy (B- Grade) then Slim (Masters) and Sean Winter (Juniors), Skippy (Legends) and Bella (Junior Girls), then as usual the time was getting the better of us, which left Erica (Women's) only having a couple of minutes to get her wave and get back to the beach on time. She did a fine job for us getting us in on time and picking up the ten points that ended up helping us win the tag.

I think we achieved what we set out to do and that was to have a fun day against a good old rival team Phillip Island. In all it was a fantastic day for both clubs and it was great to surf against some of our old foes that we used to surf against years ago and for the younger members to surf against some new foes for the future. It was also great to have a few beers with them later on back at the Island clubhouse. I'm looking forward to the Phillip Island Club coming over to our coast next year and showing them the same hospitality that they showed us. The party went well into the night with a few stories starting to get slurred as the night went on. They also put on a great spread of food with the spit lasting well into the night to soak up the beers that were getting consumed throughout the night.

I would like to thank the committee for their hard work during the day, and once again thanks to Melissa for helping out with the Girls team. Claire did a stella job spending most of the day working hard in the tent tallying up the heats and making sure everything added up correctly. Ash and Wellsy spent most of their time running around changing heats because every body was out surfing due to the waves pumping all day. And thanks to Ron, Skip Scratch, Harry, Liam and Ashfor helping out with the judging. Lastly to the club members who also helped out during the day.

Redeye