Event 5
Venue: Wimbleball Sailing Club, Exmoor
Date: 23 September 2006

Team15 Freestyle event goes off in style!
A completely new Team15 event format was launched at Wimbleball on Saturday 23 September for the combined South West zones. Having trialled freestyle competition and coaching at the last two years’ Wimbleball events, organiser Ady Davies pushed the board out and this year made it a proper, dedicated freestyle event for the first time.

Windsurfing offers different things to different people and racing doesn’t appeal to all Team15 members. However, there is fun to be had at T15 events and a freestyle ‘special’ provided a great opportunity for everyone to go along and join in the action: a total of 43 made the trip to the scenic spot on top of Exmoor.

The day was arranged as a combined coaching and competition event, with the kids divided into age groups rather than by sail size. Knowing that it was a freestyle day, everyone came equipped with smaller rigs rather than the big race sails they would normally take to an event. With four groups (under 10, under 12, under 14 and under 16), a rolling programme was set up so that at any time, three groups would be getting coaching while the fourth was competing.

For the coaching, Ady had drafted in Lawrence Cooper and Team AirBorn members George Shillito and Graham Woods. All three are former T15 members and now enthusiastic promoters of kids’ windsurfing.

A breezy start to the day meant that the coaching was not so much about fancy tricks as simply staying in control and sailing from A to B. However, as the event progressed and people’s confidence grew, everyone was soon working on tricks at their own level, from sailing one-handed, through to heli-tacks and duck-gybes. Most were sailing big, floaty boards but some of the more experienced windsurfers came with short boards and worked on their planing freestyle tricks.

First up in the buoyed-off competition area were the oldest group. Using the tried and tested UKWA/PWA freestyle competition format, they were arranged into heats of around 4 at a time, each heat being 5 minutes long. The winner of each heat went straight through to the final, while everyone else had a second chance to go through from a ‘repecharge’ heat. In a very close final, Stuart Bruce took first place, followed by Charlie Winn (who stepped up a gear and came through from the repecharge) and Bella Jezard.

The largest, under 14, group of sixteen competitors oozed excitement and go-for-it, but excitement got the better of some of them who were furiously attempting moves out of the competition area, where they weren’t going to score any points! A reminder of this fact before the repecharge helped to solve the problem. Clea Gibson amazed herself by winning this group, followed by Laurel Townsend and Barney Beauchamp in another close final.

After the first heat of the under 12’s, the judges (Liz Poultney, Sue Woods and Bob Shillito) decided to reduce the heat length to 3 minutes: the length of time it took most of the competitors to drift out of the downwind edge of the area! This speeded up proceedings and hastened Nat Warren’s emphatic victory, in which he pulled off a stream of cleanly executed sail spins, heli-tacks and duck-gybes in a gusty force four. He was followed by Lewis Macdonald and Ross Bromhead.

The under 10’s had had enough of the testing conditions by the time the others had finished, so the day ended with a spectacular 10 minute demonstration ‘heat’ by Graham and George in which they pulled off a variety of light wind tricks of the sort that won Graham the expression session at the National Freestyle Champs in Poole two weeks before. Clew-first, switch-stance 360’s, one-handed gecko flakas and the like confused, amazed and hopefully inspired the crowd, while the judges were secretly relieved that they weren’t required to describe, score or even name the tricks!

While this was in progress, Ady and his team of helpers were preparing an excellent barbeque, at which the freestyle prizes were presented and the T15 Series trophies handed out to Tamar Tigers for the South West (South) zone and the Axbridge Animals for the South West (North) zone. Both these teams will be representing their regions at the forthcoming Champions Cup in Rutland on 7 & 8 October.

Event report written by
Bob Shillito (T15 Head Coach - Axbridge Animals)

Photos to follow

We are the Champions!
West Kirby Warriors
T15 Champions 2008

Congratulations!

-- | --

Free National Sail Number
Make race scoring easy
& obtain your unique number.
It's yours for life
& a free benefit of RYA membership

Contact
tzaneen.mears@rya.org.uk
to be allocated your official number.

Once you have the number
the actual sticky-back digits
can be ordered from
UKWA

-- | --

Team15
Coach Courses


T15 Coach-Red courses
will now be known as
Racing Instructor Courses
 T15 Coach-Freestyle courses
will change to T15 Freestyle Coach!  

For information
(previous courses in 2008)

Mount Batten Centre - Plymouth
Course type: Racing Instructor
Weekend course: 27/28 September 2008
Closing date: 5 September
Cancelled: lack of candidates

Lakes Leisure - Windermere
Course type: Racing Instructor
Weekend course: 30/31 August 2008
Closing date: 15 August
Fully booked

James Hamilton Heritage Park - Glasgow
Course type: Racing Instructor
Weekend course: 30/31 August 2008
Closing date: 15 August
Cancelled: lack of candidates

Gwent Adventures - Wales
Course type: Racing Instructor
Weekend course: 9/10 August 2008
Closing date: 25 July
5 candidates on course


Grafham Water Centre - Cambridgeshire
Course type: Racing Instructor
Weekend course: 5/6 July 2008
Closing date: 30 June
Spaces available
6 candidates on course

Wimbleball Lake - Somerset
Course type: Racing Instructor
Midweek course: 3/4 July 2008
Closing date: 30 June
4 candidates on course


Roadford Lake - Okehampton
Course type: Racing Instructor
Midweek Course: 4/5 June 2008
Organised by South West Lakes Trust
Fully booked


Carsington Watersports - Derbyshire
Course type: Freestyle
Weekend Course: 3/4 May 2008
Fully booked


Carsington Watersports - Derbyshire
Course type: Racing Instructor
Midweek Course: 1/2 May 2008
6 candidates on course


Mountbatten Centre - Plymouth
Course type: Racing Instructor
Weekend Course: 12/13 April 2008
Cancelled: lack of candidates

-- | --

ADOPT-A-BEACH