WAIKANAE TEAMS DOMINATE

Coming in: The Waikanae Blue team return to shore during the tube rescue event. They are (from left): Silke McNaught, Oliver Shivnan and Connor Mitchell.

SURF LIFESAVING

WAIKANAE Surf Living Saving Club finished second-equal at this year’s Surf Rescue New Zealand Championships.

Connor Mitchell and Oliver Shivnan were named along with one other male team in the New Zealand “Black Props” IRB high-performance squad — the first step to competing in next year’s World Lifesaving Championships in Italy.

Their selection capped off an excellent weekend for the Kaiaponi Farms Waikanae Surf Life Saving Club, whose under-23 and u19 men’s teams dominated their divisions in rough conditions at Northland’s Ruakaka Beach.

Waikanae were runners-up in the open women’s division.

Taranaki’s East End Surf Life Saving Club won the BP Top Club Trophy for the first time in eight years, with 111 points.

Waikanae and Sunset Beach clubs were tied for second place with 82 points each.

Connor Mitchell, who is also the Waikanae club’s coach, said conditions on the first day demanded the “full set of IRB operating skills”.

They were navigating gale-force winds, horizontal rain and a one-to-two-metre swell.

“The 2021 IRB Nationals showed why skills, fitness and endurance of IRB competitors are so important to rescues and Surf Life Saving New Zealand as a whole,” Mitchell said.

Overall, Waikanae punched well above their weight at the champs, with the four crews rivalling the achievements of other clubs with much larger numbers, he said.

The weather had shortened the run-order of events on Saturday, but both u19 and

u23 teams won gold in the mass rescue in dramatically tight racing.

On Sunday, conditions were much improved, with blue skies, offshore wind and clean swell that allowed competitors to catch up on events missed the previous day. The assembly, tube rescue, single rescue, and the open teams race were all run in a demanding day of racing.

Both age-grade teams dominated their divisions, earning three golds and a silver and invaluable points for the overall tally.

The u23 Blue team of Connor Mitchell (driver), Oliver Shivnan (crew), Silke McNaught (patient) and Harry Allan (mass patient) missed out on a clean sweep when they finished a close second in the single rescue.

The u19 team of Harry Allan (driver), Travis Mitchell (crew), Hamish Swann (patient) and Sam Blackburne (mass patient) also fell just short of a clean sweep when they were second in the tube rescue.

The open women’s team of Britta Carroll (driver), Ana Naden (crew), Emily Horne (patient) and Oliver Shivnan (mass patient) earned silver in the assembly rescue and single rescue, and bronze in the tube rescue.

Mitchell said they performed “phenomenally”, proving to themselves that they had the “skillset to win races within their division”.

He said that while the Waikanae u23 Gold team of Cole Williams (driver), Sam Blackburne (crew), Emily Horne (patient) and Ana Naden (mass patient) were unable to obtain a podium place, they added invaluable club points and did “extremely well” for their first year in the u23 division.

The open men’s team of Mitchell (1st driver), Shivnan (1st crewperson), Allan (2nd driver), Travis Mitchell (2nd crewperson) and Silke McNaught (patient) took third place.