Australian Champion - Discussion

[finger]

well said mick
Merry Christmas
gary

[smurf]

well done mick, its great to have you on the team of comp regulars, and the little mate of yours too. You hit on a few good points there and sometimes as an organiser you can get gaught up in the whole thing and not smell the roses so to speak, The island comp is a good place to come and sit back and watch a well run comp, in powerful wavfes. with all of us doing our best, it was great to get to know you and really enjoyed the coffs dvd you did up, lots of fun too, Keep up the debate boys as one way or anohter your voices all get heard,,,, oh and well done to Albert Munoz for taking out the Open pointscore for the first time everthis year

[smurf]

:roll:oops that should have read the Opens in the great WAKA club of the Gong..

[splashy]

Getting back to the original question of an Australian Champion. How can there be an Oz Champion when it is based on competitions on the East Coast?
It would be an Oz Champion in name only, with very little credibility. If the champion is a champion of a geographic area then it needs to be inclusive of all potential competitors - no matter their level of ability. Anything else is a pretty hollow title, or should be named fior what it is - KSA Champion. A title that is worthy and respectable in it's own right.
The challenge remains to engage the entire country to gain some of that credibility back.
Previously, with events held under Surfing Australia, this was possible with little or no cost. SA ran the events. The opportunity to encourage these "free" (as in no cost to organise, just the cost to enter) competitions by rating them - say 1/4 points for a regional title, 1/2 points for a state title and full points equal to a KSA event for a national title - has gone.
...and part of this challenge is to engage fairly thin inetrest group that is geographically diverse in to a cohesive movement.
And let's face it - we are kneeboarders because we like to do things differently - we don't kneeboard to be members of a club or group.
Kudos to the guys who are doing it, and kudos to those wanting to do.
But I don't think the statement of "don;t just talk, do something about it" cust much mustard. Some people are better doers, and some people are better with ideas. But together, through collaboration, the sum of the whole can be greater than the sum of the parts.
Respect the ideas of all, and take them on board to make things easier would be a good starting point.
A simple starting point would be to ask for help, or assign duties to those with the skills. An audit of professions from those wanting to be involved, and then allocation of duties means things would - theoretically - be easier.
But how do you do a an audit without a membership?
This a great interesting post. Nice reading.

[feralmick]

Sorry to get away from your thread Splashy, posting something i typed offline this morning.

Misread the tone of some of the posts on this thread.
Good excuse-been anxious about an impending hospital visit which i
got over with on the weekend.
Thinking a lot clearer this morning, i reread all the posts and was
very impressed by the content.
Virtually everything i mentioned in my post had already been said,
except for the fact that we have 2 Aust champs.I don`t think it was
intentionally missed, but both Glen and Simon (and Albert) deserve recognition for their
respective achievements.
Almost everthing posted is positive, well thought out and healthy for debate.
Maybe i`m wrong, but i can`t see kneeboarding getting bigger.
Unless you`re a reasonable k`boarder at your local break, there seems to be more of a negative stigma
attached to kneelos than when most of us were kids in the 70`s and 80`s. This would be greater in Sydney
than many other parts of the country, making it awkward for any kids who don`t want grief from their friends.
Not being negative, just realistic.
Different problems for different regions, and a wide range of personalities, backgrounds and skill levels to
help solve them.
Being a laid back country fella, not into pomp and ceremony, i thought there are 3 agm`s, one on the Friday
night before each contest.
Some are good, others seem a bit drawn out, and occasionally someone starts drinking too early.
Anyway,
if you`ve stopped sulking Greg, well done on starting this thread, and invoking some intelligent response.
Looking forward to more discussion and seeing everyone next year.

Slightly warm up here and only a handfull of surf`s since May.
A small cyclone between here and Fiji would be welcome.

[DYdamo]

Getting back to the original question of an Australian Champion. How can there be an Oz Champion when it is based on competitions on the East Coast?
It would be an Oz Champion in name only, with very little credibility.

What an absolute lame arsed comment..................
I'm sure Glen(amateur) and Simon( )have a different opinion...

[finger]

Can someone fill me in on Glen and his title
PLEASE

[hart]

Anything else is a pretty hollow title

mate I gotta say this is an extraordinarily, strongly worded post given its inaccuracy



And noting that its your first post in over 30 months on this site like that's 2 and a half years.......I must be missing something

hart

[RMcKnee]

What an absolute lame arsed comment..................

.......I must be missing something

Sorry DYdamo and Hart, but I for one think Splashy has raised some valid and very reasonable points here. Top help you guys see what I and maybe some others see in his post that you may be missing, I highlighted certain phrases in bold in the quote below.

How can there be an Oz Champion when it is based on competitions on the East Coast?
It would be an Oz Champion in name only, with very little credibility. If the champion is a champion of a geographic area then it needs to be inclusive of all potential competitors - no matter their level of ability. Anything else is a pretty hollow title, or should be named fior what it is - KSA Champion. A title that is worthy and respectable in it's own right.
The challenge remains to engage the entire country to gain some of that credibility back.

...and part of this challenge is to engage fairly thin inetrest group that is geographically diverse in to a cohesive movement.
And let's face it - we are kneeboarders because we like to do things differently - we don't kneeboard to be members of a club or group.

Taking quotes from someone's post out of context is not in the spirit of the site's professed aim, which is encapsulated in the following, written by Don Harris.

As a reminder, KSUSA is an organization founded on creating camaraderie in the kneeboard community. This community has grown world-wide. This website would not be here if it were not for you the contributors. Before you post, ask yourself if you are promoting camaraderie and treating people with respect. It's really very simple. We have managed to keep ourselves fairly well policed so all we ask is that you keep the content as positive and constructive as possible in the hope to build a better community. Thanks, Don

(My bold type)

Far from being dismissive of any competitive kneelo's achievements, Splashy was complimentary to both the people and the organisations involved in competitive kneeboarding.

The fact that a person hasn't posted for a long time is neither here nor there. There are many possible reasons for someone's absence. Has the person been ill, incarcerated, unable to post, disinclined to post? To put this in "nanny state terms"; I'd have thought that welcoming absent friends would be a far more "appropriate" response.

I'm not a contest-oriented surfer, as I've stated on here before. However, that doesn't prevent me from admiring those people who are contest-oriented. For the record, what I admire about RK Slater is not so much the number of World Titles he has won, but rather the sheer depth of his surfing ability. The same is true of my regard for Simon Farrer, Albert Munoz, Stanley Kofoed and anyone else who chooses to make the commitment necessary to surf well enough to win competitions. In this respect, I suspect I'm no different from most other surfers.

Healthy debate about the mechanism by which those competitions are organised, administered and conducted seems a completely reasonable, indeed a desirable thing. Here's a chance for real openness and transparency at a grass-roots level, something of which every kneelo should be proud, as that would seem to set us as a group somewhat aside from other areas of the surfing establishment, which have apparently far more rigid structures.

The challenge remains to engage the entire country to gain some of that credibility back.

And if Splashy waited 30 months to put forward this idea, then I reckon it was worth the wait.

While I don't want any involvement in "organised" surfing for myself at the moment, I'd be happy to pay a certain (reasonable) amount each year to an organisation committed to determining an All Australian Champion on an annual basis from a round of competitions in every surfing state. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

This would mean having competitions in Qld, NSW, Vic, Tasmania, SA and WA.

Do the footboarders do this?

[SFKneelo]

While I'm in no position to comment on any of this, you all are doing a nice job so far on keeping a volatile topic from becoming devisive.

Highlighting McKnee's quote of the Mission above... 'before you post, ask yourself...'

This is just a very general request to all, and not towards anyone in particular.

[southpeakbrad]

I just caught up on this thread (2 pages worth), Wow. Great discussion and perspectives that are really interesting.

On Topic.
I guess that if you really could have representative comps throughout AUS that had similar strength of fields then that type of approach could result in the Champion. But as has been stated, kneeboarding is just too small, and AUS is such a large country.

Looking at what you do have with the PI comp, from what I've learned in the past two years, I tend to agree with Jamie. Is there any other comp that're harder to win? I can imagine that Bendy and Coff's are very hard to win in their own right but from what I'm told guys come out of nowhere for the PI event who have chances to win who may not travel to others. Is there any other comp that a surfer would want to win more? Isn't winning the ultimate achievement. If a surfer had a bunch of top 4s on a circuit and won the point Title (Champ?) but never won an event would that be as esteemed as winning at PI? For those of you who have experience at PI, be that a few years or >10 years, how do you view it??? Or, from your perspective, would it mean more to you to win at PI or to win the World Title (was the field at Santa Cruz '07 as tough as the field year in/year out at PI?)? I guess that if the majority of AUS kneeboarders hold the PI comp in a regard that's different, special, higher, and SA has left the determination of AUS Champ up to KSA, then from here it seems like there could be the AUS Champ (PI) and a KSA Champ based on the 3 yearly events.

OK, I'll bug off now!
Thanks, Brad

[albert]

On Topic.
I guess that if you really could have representative comps throughout AUS that had similar strength of fields then that type of approach could result in the Champion. But as has been stated, kneeboarding is just too small, and AUS is such a large country.

However, in a similar note, how many US National Kneeboarding Champions have been from the East Coast of the US? In fact, shortly after I left Florida (around 2001) the ESA (eastern Surfing Association) cancelled all kneeboarding events, so any east coast kneeboarder that had the desire to compete for the national title had no recourse but to show up at the nationals and hope to get in.

Looking at what you do have with the PI comp, from what I've learned in the past two years, I tend to agree with Jamie. Is there any other comp that're harder to win?

This is a good point, IMHO I dont think that PI is a harder comp than even 75% of most world contests. And by comparison, Coffs and Bendi are easier comps, the depth of talent in victoria is incredible, and for them to travel vast distances for two comps every year is considerably more expensive than for us in NSW to travel to the PI comp.

[eqKneelo]

ALBERT WROTE:

Simply gathering and hanging out is great, but it will not resolve the basic need we all have to compete in some way, shape or form.

Then again, most comps are 90% gathering anyway in my view, you only spend 20 minutes in the water, and two days hanging out, talking to people, sharing stories, etc.

Truer words never spoken.

... So far we have had over 1300 views of the forum with only 10 contributors...

It's because all of us in the US is reading this with envy.
Damn... I'd kill to have your problems.

Keep it up, boys.

[Tony Wales]

I have been following this thread closely since day one however I’m not convinced that this web site is the correct place to have some parts of this discussion so I have already sent my own thoughts directly to the KSA.

I’m posting here to try to help put some things into perspective:

I believe there is a very valid argument as put forward by “splashy” that an Australian Champion as crowned by the KSA represents a “geographical champion” based on the east coast because financial and time resources/constraints restrict potential competitors from WA and more remote parts of Australia from competing on the KSA circuit and thus precludes them from contesting the KSA title. As much as I personally hate the word “amateur” (as it is so misinterpreted and generally redundent in sport), it really does apply to kneeboarding at all levels as we do this because of our “love of the sport” and as such we must acknowledge that not everybody has the resources available to follow an expensive and time consuming championship process with no compensatory monetary reward at the end.

The Surfing Australian Kneeboard Champion as selected at the Australian Surf Masters Title is the direct lineage to the Aussie Title which started off in the early 70’s. Through qualification processes in each state (via regions, zones, etc.) surfers are selected to represent their states at the Surf Masters Titles. Sadly the whole qualification process for the Surf Masters Title has fallen into something of a shambles and has not been supported by both the kneelos and the regional Surfing Australia governing bodies – however one can’t blame the governing bodies if no kneelos turn up to compete – equally I’m sure there are a number of valid reasons why the elite kneeboard community ceased to support the Surf Masters Titles. So, technically the Australian Surf Masters Title in kneeboarding does offer kneelos from all over Australia equal opportunity to compete for the title – they just don’t take advantage of it. Glenn Bitton won the title this year held in Coffs Harbour, NSW– unfortunately only five kneelos turned up and all were from NSW – from what I understand this was despite KSA efforts to support the event. I understand that Surfing Australia has decided to discontinue the Kneeboard division at the Surf Masters Titles (plus all Surfing Australia qualifying events) thus removing the equal opportunity all kneelos in Australia had of being crowned Australian Champion.

Obviously the majority of the national kneelo community have voted with their feet and flippers to support the KSA circuit ahead of the Surfing Australia Surf Masters Title. In marketing speak, it's Coke and Pepsi.

I personally have no problem comprehending the concept of having a mutually exclusive Australian Circuit Champion and an Australian Champion selected fairly and equitably across the national kneelo community. Also I think it’s worthwhile to have both a social and competitive outlet and also have a purely elite competition to select the sports ultimate open champion. The important thing is the differences between the two titles are clearly and distinctly indentified in the mind of both the competitors and the public - ie: no confusion as now exists.

[splashy]

Interesting discussion here guys. I like it, despite the obvious kneejerk reactionary comments from those who obviously didn't read my post fully.
I'm sorry if you got the wrong impression. I have nothing but respect for those who have won certain titles.
I actually believe the KSA Title has more credit and balls than an Australian title. I also consider that a KSA event held in a state is much more credible than a State title.
So does not posting for - God-knows however long - that I haven't make any comments that I make, or those who don't frequent here, it less valuable? Should we be only valuing those who post a lot? If that is the case, perhaps we can set of a "value-meter", and those who post the most can have a higher value-score than others. and that way we know that the higher-frequency posters have more valuable things things to say. Yeah - that sounds good.