A group of 17 Roleystone firefighters have returned home after a gruelling athletic competition that pitted them against the best volunteers in the country.
The Roleystone Volunteer Fire Brigade flew to Bendigo earlier this month to compete in the 2018 Victorian Fire Brigade Volunteers Urban State Championships and running coach Ray McDermott said the brigade’s first foray into the competition went well.
“We ended up equal fourth, which is good for us because the competition is pretty fierce,” he said.
“Overall we performed very well.”
Across events that challenged teams to perform quickly in hypothetical emergency scenarios the team picked up two second places, a third and a fourth against volunteers from across Australia.
WA also won the interstate challenge, which pitted the best volunteers from each state against each other.
The challenges included tests of how quickly a team could act to an emergency including challenging them to scale walls and deploy a firefighting hose in as little time as they could.
The competition between brigades was close with Roleystone less than a second off first place in three of their four events.
Mr McDermott said it was too early to tell if the team would go again next year but brigade had a blast this time.
“It was really good, everybody had a great time and enjoyed it,” he said.
