2015 awards

Tonight we’ll be presenting a series of awards which recognize performance, improvement, dedication and club spirit.

The awards have a racing focus but we’ll also be talking about the wider FCC – social, touring, supporting each other.

Awards are a recognition of individual results – but they are also a celebration of the efforts of all of us behind the results: the coaches, parents, friends and club board.  While it’s a risk mentioning names I’m going to anyway.  Some highlights:

• Coaches. 
  • Dasha Kopecek – Coaches Clinics, helping to push the concept of a pathway for both paddlers and coaches, supporting our coaches to learn and improve, and more recently introducing the Masters paddling program,
  • Trinity coaches and captains: Joe Alia, Alan Daley and the Trinity team,
  • Strathcona :  Liesl, Sophie, Jen and Marg who are helping to reinvigorate strathcona paddling at FCC
  • Coaches leading the beginner courses which are a great tradition at FCC, and also leading squads and groups.  In particular: Julie, Joe, Marg, Neil, Tony, Alex, Trev, Kieran, Dasha.
• Volunteers.
  • All of the FCC people who have helped out with running kayaking and canoeing events this year.  Joe, Connie, Gary who run and help out at every CV marathon event.  Kieran on the sprint events.  And Peter Ohman, Alex, Trev, Mark who have organized and run the FCC canoeing events
  • Plus all the volunteers at the events, on turn buoys, on motor boats, first aid etc etc.
  • Volunteers who make FCC what it is: creating the social environment, maintaining and improving our facilities- working bees etc.
• Parents, Partners, Children and Families of paddlers.
  • For supporting our paddlers at all levels
  • Driving…
  • For to partners for providing tickets of leave for us to go paddling
  • And in many cases for gradually realizing what a great opportunity paddling provides and joining in!
• FCC Board, who have been a fabulous support in building up our amazing fleet, our facilities and in supporting the FCC community in racing and touring.

Now onto the awards.

1)   Winter Series

FCC had a very good presence in this year’s winter series – in all races.  We had great participation levels, possibly the highest of all the clubs.  We came a very creditable second to INCC on club points and on junior points, with Trinity just pipped by MLC in the school points.  Great results.

This is to acknowledge the best paddlers in the Winter Series – Marathon Season.

Separate awards will be presented to male, female & junior members.
Members who accumulate the most number of points in the competition will be declared winners. In the event of a tie, the member who has the highest finishing record will be declared the winner

On individual results, we’ve calculated them in two ways: the FCC traditional way which scores 10 points for first FCC paddler in a constituted class, 9 points for second, 8 for third etc.  In calculating these we’ve not used traditional constituted classes but instead have divided paddlers into three age groups, junior up to 18, open, and vets 50+.

The results of this methodology really reward paddling reasonably well in lots of races, rather than doing brilliantly in a small number of races.

We’ve also calculated the results according to the Canoeing Victoria current methodology.  This corrects results for boat type (K1 vs TC2 etc), paddler age group, gender.  Where the results differ significantly we’ve award on both CV and FCC points.

Participation:

• Women: Lisa completed 5 races, Elena, Tania and Anna 4 each.
• Men: Con and Rowan completed 6 races, Trevor and Alex 5, Tony and Chris 4 each.
• Juniors: Lasal, Alex, Brendan and Noah 6 races, Tom, Patrick, Charlie and Josh 5 each.

Results by Canoe Vic system:

• Chris Runting: 379 points out of 400 from 4 races, best veteran male paddler
• Hamish Young: 360 points out of 400 from 4 races, best U18 male paddler
• Anna Wilson: 284 points out of 400 from 4 races, 3rd or 4th open female paddler
• Noah Cameron: 328 points out of 600 from 6 races, 260 points from 4 races, 3rd U18 male paddler
• Macgregor Doyle: 256 points from 4 races, first U16 male paddler
• James van der Paal: 3rd U16 male paddler
• Lulu Kershaw: 1st U14 female paddler
• Canoe: Alex James 231 out of 500 from 5 races, 206 from 4 races; Trevor Archibald 246 from 500 from 5 races, 205 from 4 races.

 Results (by FCC points system) and awards

• Veteran mens: Chris Runting
• Men's Con Toronis, Chris Runting not far back.
• Junior Noah Cameron (Alex Boyd and Brendan Clarke close behind)
• Canoe Rowan Doyle, Trevor Archibald & Alex James close behind.
• Women's Lisa Newton with Anna Wilson close.

 2)   FCC Races: TC2 race, C4 race, Sprint series

This year has seen plenty of racing return to Fairfield.  We’ve hosted the biggest of the winter series races with the teams race – together with INCC; we’ve held the inaugural C4 race in both kneeling and sitting C4s; we’ve held the second of the T&J Ohman Classic Canoe Doubles races and we’re most of the way through the Fairfield Spring Sprint Series.

We have some magnificent trophies for the C4 and Doubles Canoe Classic races, all donated by the Ohman family.  Tonight we have the trophies for the recent doubles canoe classic which was run from Banksia St to Fairfield 2 weeks ago.