Surfing Queensland TONIC Magazine - Winter 2014 Winter 2014 | Page 17

TONIC | news Stealth Queensland Bodyboarding Titles The Stealth and VS Queensland Bodyboarding Titles series concluded in June with the second event of two state qualifiers being held on the Sunshine Coast. Tricky conditions met Queensland’s best bodyboarders at notorious bodyboarding hotspot “Ann Street” Reef at Dicky Beach.  Shelly Beach’s Zac Sonner was the first of the blue ribbon Open Men’s divisions to take out a Queensland State Title in the Drop Knee (DK) division, having surfed two aggregated score finals in the second event of the series.  A late afternoon pulse in swell assisted Sonner, 27, in putting on a powerful display of drop knee boardriding to score a two-heat total of 20.5 to best Gary Thatcher (Highworth, QLD -20.04), John Childs (Buderim,QLD - 13.3), Luke Jackson (Everton Park, QLD 10.27) and Ashley Brown (Ballina, NSW - 8.57). Kingscliff brothers Santo and Buzz van der Waal launched into a sibling battle royal in their aggregated dual final of the Grommets Under 14 division with elder brother San- to coming out with a win in the event. Buzz had the last laugh with an overall win in the series after a count back to compile wave score from both Gold and Sunshine Coast events. Jasper Hinchliffe (Kingscliffe, NSW) dealt the event’s biggest upset by taking out the reigning Australian Junior Champion, Calen Jordan (Palm Beach, QLD) in the Junior final. Jordan placed fourth in the hotly contested bout after coming out of the gates early with two high scores. The final went to Hincliffe however with less than two points separating all four finalists. The Hincliffe dominance continued in the Blue Ribbon Open Men’s division with elder brother Theo leading for ¾ of the final before finally being relegated to second place to Nicholas Rubesaame (Marcoola, QLD) who defeated Hincliffe, Josh Keenan (Mountain Ck, QLD) and Benoit Cren (Gaythorne, QLD) respectively. want more? surfingqueensland.com.au winter Issue – 17