Ash Bolt
Four Surf Coast and Bellarine junior surfers have taken wins at the third round of the Victorian Junior Surfing Titles on Sunday.
In two-to-three foot offshore lines at his home beach in Jan Juc, Jarvis Barrow made it three wins from three in the under-14 boys competition.
Barrow qualified for the final after dominating Saturday’s heat with one of the biggest waves of the day, where he snapped off the lip of a huge finishing section for a score of 8.17.
He backed it up with a second score of 6.33 to book his spot in the final.
In Sunday’s final, he backed up his good form with the two highest scoring waves in the final to claim the win, ahead for fellow Jan Juc surfers Remy Filer and Jack Lindsay in second and third respectively.
It was a clean sweep for Jan Juc in the under-14 competitions, with Chloe Muscroft claiming the win for the girls.
Muscroft won a tight heat over Torquay’s Dune Pruvot on Saturday, with both surfers qualifying for the final, while Wallington’s Billie Cook finished second in her heat and also made the final.
Muscroft saved her best for Sunday and was the most consistent surfer in the final, picking up scores of 6.50 and 6.57, to claim a 2.41-point win.
Dune Pruvot looked a chance when she scored 6.83 on one wave, but couldn’t find a second strong score and finished third.
The region was also well-represented in the boys’ under-16 final, which was won by Barwon Heads’ Max Bassett.
One of the biggest fields of the event, with 15 entrants, saw Bassett and fellow Barwon Heads local Harry Farrer qualify for the final alongside Jan Juc’s Nalu Belyea and Leroy Filer.
In tough scoring conditions, Bassett scored the best two waves in the finals – and the only waves scoring over five points – to finish with a score of 11.86.
Belyea scored his highest scores on his last two waves and his total of 8.60 put him in second, ahead of Filer in third.
The final Surf Coast winner came in the under-18 girls’ competition, where Jan Juc’s Emily McGettigan put together one of the highest scores of the day in a high-quality final.
McGettigan put together two solid waves in Saturday’s heat to qualify for the final in second place behind Eva Bassed.
However she was able to flip the result on Sunday in one of the tightest finals of the round.
McGettigan scored a 7.33 on her second wave and backed it up later with a 7.90 – her best of the weekend – to give herself a strong score of 15.23.
Bassed proved a worthy challenger, scoring the highest single-wave score of the final with an 8.27, but her second best score of 5.80 meant McGettigan took the win by 1.16 points.
Fellow Jan Juc surfer Cielle Bouvier took third by just 0.04 points.
While they didn’t claim the win, there were also strong performances from local surfers in the under 18 boys’ competition.
Barwon Heads pair Willem Watson and Isaiah Norling both qualified for the final, with Watson’s 16.20 score in the semi-final the highest of any heat across all competitions on the weekend, as did Jan Juc’s Willis Droomer.
However Rye’s Lucas Hickson took out the win with a huge two turn combo that gave him a nine-point ride.
With his 16.10 combined heat total, Hickson had the other surfers in a combination situation halfway through the heat.
Watson and Droomer fought hard to break the combination with both surfers finding their way onto eight-point rides, but they couldn’t find another wave to overtake Hickson.
Watson was able to take second within the last stages of the heat and a combined total of 14.40.
Droomer and Norling came in third and fourth respectively.
