Best result for Waikanae

IRB North Island Champs - Mass Rescue - Oliver Shivnan, Silke McNaught, Connor Mitchell - Waikanae U23 Men. PIcture by Paul Rickard

WAIKANAE Surf Life Saving Club's IRB teams produced a skilled and determined display over the weekend to record the club's best performance in the North Island championships.

The BP-sponsored event attracted more than 60 inflatable-rescue-boat teams from across the North Island, and some from the South Island too.

Kaiaponi Farms Waikanae finished second overall in the championships, on 93 points, 19 behind winners Sunset Beach, of Port Waikato.

These two clubs fought out many of the top placings across the event.

East End, of Taranaki, finished third, on 77 points. Mt Maunganui, on 72, and Mairangi Bay, on 44, completed the top five clubs.

“I'm unbelievably proud of all our teams,” Waikanae IRB head coach and team leader Connor Mitchell said.

“That's our best team result ever in the North Island championships, and I reckon we are only a couple of teams short of being able to be the top IRB club in the country.”

Mitchell drove the boat and Oliver Shivnan was the crewman in the Waikanae under-23 combination that dominated their division.

They won all four events — the mass rescue, the assembly, the single rescue and tube rescue. Their patient was Silke McNaught.

“We didn't talk about winning all four titles this year, but that's what we wanted to do,” Mitchell said.

Last year they won three out of four events in the same division.

“It's an amazing feeling to go out and win all four in our last year in the division, and to win the way we did,” Mitchell said.

“We had quite significant leads in most of our races, and Ollie and I feel it's set us up well for next year in the open division, where we feel we will be right on the pace.”

The Waikanae u19 team of driver Harry Allan and crewman Travis Mitchell won three of the four titles in their age division — the mass, single and assemble rescue events.

Their patient was Hamish Swann.

The Waikanae open women's team of driver Britta Carroll, crewman Ana Naden and patient Emily Horne finished runners-up to the world champion Sunset Beach team in the assembly, single and mass rescue finals, and were third in the tube rescue race.

Connor Mitchell said all the Waikanae teams excelled in the conditions on their home beach.

“The under-19 boys did really well on their home beach, to the extent their performance stunned the crews from the other clubs.

“The women's team have come on in leaps and bounds in the past year, and it says a great deal about their performance that in almost all their races they were second only to the top women's team in the world,” Mitchell said.

“Britta, Ana and Emily have made a massive effort to do what they did in that division.”

Mitchell said the other u23 team from Waikanae, Cole Williams and Sam Blackburne, also raced well all weekend.

“We have received lots of really good feedback about the way the championships were run here.

“The other clubs were stoked with the conditions on the beach, and the overall set-up for the champs,” he said.

It augured well for the chances of Waikanae to be chosen as the venue for the New Zealand championships next year, he said.

This year's New Zealand IRB championships will be staged at Ruakaka Beach, just south of Whangarei, on April 10 and 11.