Life Saving Victoria announces junior carnival changes

LIFE Saving Victoria has announced significant changes to the way junior surf carnivals and competitions will be conducted next season and into the future.

A major change that will affect under-14 competitors is that they will no longer be part of Nipper Carnivals.

Under 14s will be removed from junior competitions as of the 2018/19 season and only attend senior carnivals.

The senior carnivals will instead run an under-14/ under-15 program – mirroring the Aussies Youth formula – so that individual events run separately as under 14 and under 15, and all team events will run as under-15 events only.

If possible, under-14 and under-15 beach events will be run before or after water events for that program to allow those age groups to compete on the beach, but this is time-dependent and not mandatory.

Life Saving Victoria also proposes to revert qualifying to a single qualification model.

This model is aligned to previous approaches where a single opportunity was available to qualify at states, albeit at a regional level.

Junior Carnivals 4 and 5 will be used to qualify the events, with two specified qualifying events for each age group at each carnival, and Carnival 6 as a contingency if qualifications are not completed.

Only five events will need qualification: individual beach flags, individual board race, individual iron, individual tube race and team board rescue. All other events will be open to all competitors.

For competitors from different clubs that would like to be on the same team, competitors from clubs with an aggregate score of 50 or more from the 2018 State Championships are ineligible to create combined teams at the 2019 Victorian Junior Lifesaving Championships.

Competitors from all other clubs that are unable to field at least one team in an age group will be able to combine with other competitors from clubs in the same position.