Surf club’s sister act
Surf club’s sister act
February 07, 2008
Section: Sport
JOEL RITCHIE
TWO SISTERS from Shellharbour Surf Club have been making great strides in different disciplines this season.
Laura Elkerton, 19 and Zoe Elkerton, 13, have proved among their club’s top performers in administration and competition respectively.
Laura spent this past weekend spent at a Surf Life Saving Leadership course at Collaroy, just weeks after attending a nation-wide event at the same venue.
She was selected from elite groups of nominees for both courses after being nominated by Shellharbour Surf Club. The courses involved leadership, team work, negotiation skills and self-development.
World Cup-winning Wallaby coach Rod McQueen was one of the speakers who addressed life saving’s future leaders.
Laura aims to set up a youth development program with the club’s cadets that could be picked up by other South Coast clubs.
Laura said she would also like to find ways to stop members aged between 15 and 19 leaving the surf lifesaving movement.
“That’s where we have our biggest drop-out rate,” she said.
“If we can retain numbers it will be good for surf life saving,” she said.
Laura’s interest in surf life saving came after a “compulsory” year when she and her family moved to the areas from Western Sydney.
Meanwhile, Zoe is looking forward to continuing her great competition season at the NSW Championships at Swansea Belmont at the end of the month.
There, Zoe will be hoping to improve on her 2007 results of second in the surf race and third in the Board Rescue.
Zoe’s season started at the Interbranch Championships, where the under 14s competitor finished second on the surf race, ironwoman and board rescue (with teammate Karri Ryan).
She was then selected in the Interstate championships, finishing third in the ironwoman.
Zoe also was the under 14 female water champion of this season’s Sydney Water Series.
At the recent Country Championships, Zoe won the ironwoman and surf race and teamed with Ryan and Jayden Gaston to finish third in the board relay.
Zoe then teamed with Ryan, Tiarna Edwards and Rachel Hobson to win the under 15 Cameron Relay and Chelsea Flood and Karri Ryan to finish third in the board relay.