Lifesaving surf camp success

ASKED how importantly leadership is around a surf lifesaving club, Inverloch Surf Lifesaving Club member Beau Vanagtmaal did not stop to think before he said, “Highly important.”
Beau Vanagtmaal was the club’s 2015 champion and says of past club captain and champion athlete Nick Lehman, “He is the most influential person I know. He has been my role model since I was seven or eight years old.”
It is the example of leaders like Lehman at surf clubs that motivates others to extend themselves.
Vanagtmaal was one of the cool as cucumber leaders at the Life Saving Development Camp at Waratah Beach Surf Lifesaving Club last week.
Another thing is for sure: they were exceptional role models for the 30 young life savers from clubs along the South Gippsland coast attending the camp.
The Life Saving Development Camp, in its tenth year, is a unique opportunity for those who take part to gain five awards – advanced resuscitation, senior first aid, spinal management, inflatable rescue boat crew and inflatable rescue boat driver – and to obtain a nationally recognised qualification.
All participants are bronze medallion holders and the camp aims to train them up to a level where each is able to take charge of their own beach, confident in the knowledge they have what it takes to respond to the kind of emergency that could from time to time arise.
The camp, hosted at Sandy Point by the Waratah Beach Surf Life Saving Club, ran from Sunday, January 17 until Saturday 23 with participants attending from the host club as well as those at Woolamai, Cape Patterson, Wonthaggi, Inverloch, Venus Bay and Waratah Beach at Sandy Point, where it was hosted.

Good hands: front row from left, Beau Vanagtmaal and Fraser Tanner, back row from left, Holy White, Rachel Fraser, Jack Kennedy, Cameron Allum, Aidan Smith, South Coast District Ambulance clinical support officer Ross Salathiel and Joshua Smith about to take part in a mock motor vehicle rescue operation.

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Posted by Sarah Vella on Jan 26 2016. Filed under Sport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry