Happy New Year to all our loyal Bay of Plenty Times sports fans and to the thousands of visitors who are enjoying the Western Bay's abundant coastal attractions.
It is the ideal time to look back on what has been another stellar year for sport in the Western Bay.
The undoubted sporting highlight came from a 21-year-old swimmer who grew up ploughing through long, lonely laps at the Greerton Swimming Club hoping to one day emulate our greatest swimmer in double Olympic gold medal winner Danyon Loader.
That moment came for Nathan Capp in September at the New Zealand Short Course Championships in Wellington. He swam 14:38.74 to wipe 16 seconds off Loader's 1500m freestyle record that had stood for 22 years.
Capp also broke the national short course 800m freestyle record in August so his snub by the Commonwealth Games selectors remains one of the year's unanswered sporting mysteries.
It was a year to treasure for cricket fans. The return of international cricket attracted thousands to Mount Maunganui's impressive Bay Oval as the Black Caps took on South Africa in two memorable ODIs in October.
The region now has a stage of the highest quality to host international cricket and, once lights are installed, sources close to NZ Cricket tell me we can expect to see the Black Caps in action at Bay Oval nearly every summer.
It was sad that Kane Williamson, along with Trent Boult one of Tauranga's two Black Caps, should miss both games against the Proteas through a minor injury. But it was the only blip on the best year of his international career as he surged up the ICC top batsmen lists.
Boult proved he is the best left arm pace bowler running in to bowl in world cricket with the statistics to back it up. The 25-year-old took his 100th test scalp in the win over Sri Lanka in Christchurch and now has 106 wickets at an average of 27.19 to be seventh on the ICC list. He continues to knock over the very best players, as he showed by dismissing Sri Lanka's world No2 batsman Kumar Sangakkara twice in Christchurch for single-figure scores.
Tauranga can rightly claim to be the home of New Zealand sprinting with the dynamic Papamoa pairing of Joseph Millar (first) and Kodi Harmer (second) again rated the two fastest 100m runners in the country.
Millar is the 100m and 200m record holder, with Harman not only a force on the track but a gold medallist at world surf lifesaving beach sprints.