Hawke’s Bay sports awards: Nominations open - who’s in the running?

The types of performances that win Hawke's Bay Sports Awards, from left, Olympics gold medal rowers and 2023 award prospect Tom Mackintosh, 1980 winner Keith Trask and 2022 winner Emma Twigg. Photo / NZME

The performance of runner Geordie Beamish at the World Athletics Championships has added some spice to the 2023 Forsyth Barr Hawke’s Bay Sport and Recreation Awards for which nominations close at the end of next week.

US-based Beamish, from Havelock North, was fifth in the 3000 metres steeplechase in Budapest, Hungary, on Tuesday, the best placing by a New Zealand athlete on the track in the 47 years of the World Athletics Championships.

Fellow Hawke’s Bay athlete Georgia Hulls could also be considered, as runner-up in a race in which the national women’s 200 metres record was broken earlier this year, and as a contender at the World Championships.

With a personal Worldwide current top-100 ranking and a best of 22.84sec in that race, she exited the World championships early today (New Zealand Time), when fifth in her heat, running 23.36sec.

With honours in more than a dozen categories, from individual, team, officials and support performance categories to recognition of long service, nominations for the Hawke’s Bay awards, which date back to the original Sportsman of the Year Award in the mid-1960s, close on September 1.

Coming back from three years of instability from the Covid era and with sport in Hawke’s Bay this year facing issues following Cyclone Gabrielle, performances since September 3 last year will be eligible and awards will be presented on October 28 at the Pettigrew.Green Arena, Taradale.

Sport Hawke’s Bay (SHB) general manager Ryan Hambleton said about a dozen nominations had been received in the opening days earlier this month, and he is urging clubs, organisations and anyone else with particular interest to get nominations completed according to the processes and forms available on the SHB website.

He said that with the Cyclone having hit the region so widely, at a time when summer competitions were coming to an end and preparation for winter codes just starting, it would be interesting to see what entries there are for the Community Initiative Award and what clubs, organisations and other groups had done in response to the Cyclone.

Last year the community initiative award went to Central Hawke’s Bay District Council mobility project Waka Takaro.

The Supreme Sports Award last year was presented to rower Emma Twigg, recognising her women’s single sculls win at the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021, while the awards also saw the induction of Black Sticks hockey veteran Shea McAleese into the Hawke’s Bay Sports Hall of Fame.

The previous year the Hawke’s Bay Magpies rugby squad, as a result of winning the Ranfurly Shield and the NPC championship title and winning promotion to the NPC premiership in 2020, became only the second team to win the major prize in the history of the awards.,

Among those who could be in consideration this year are 2016, 2018 and 2020 winner Aimee Fisher (who is competing at the World canoe sprint championships this week in Duisburg, Germany), rower Tom Mackintosh, and Warriors rugby league captain Tohu Harris, and with Junior performances including those of golfer Zack Swanwick and sprinter Rylan Noone.

Among frontrunners for the teams awards could be Hawke’s Bay members of the Central Stags men’s cricket teams, which last season won both the major championship for the Plunket Shield and the one-day cricket competition for the Ford Trophy.

The Hawke’s Bay Tui women’s rugby team has claims with its Farah Palmer Cup championship division win last September and promotion to the Premiership where it has this season brought-off Hawke’s Bay’s first women’s rugby win over Auckland since 2006 and now qualified for the semifinals.