The Whanau Teams event at the 2023 NZ Shears in Te Kuiti, won by Sir David and Jack Fagan.
Expectant mum wins major woolhandling title
Angela Stevens, of Napier, last night won the New Zealand Shears Open Woolhandling final, in the latest of a series of family triumphs in Te Kuiti for the family of 2017 World Champion and three-times New Zealand Shears Open shearing champion John Kirkpatrick and wife Raylene.
Their 31-year-old daughter and son-in-law, shearer and woolhandler Ricci Stevens are expecting their fourth child in late June – the woolhandler triumphing on Saturday night despite being 27 weeks pregnant.
Angela Stevens, along with Cushla Abraham represented New Zealand in the summer’s home-and-away trans-Tasman series.
Stevens is no longer fulltime woolhandling - instead working in early childhood education, at Busy Bees, Havelock North, and studying for her diploma, which she aims to complete later this year.
With regular New Zealand Shears Open winners Joel Henare and Sheeree Alabaster not at the Championships this year, it was a chance for a few others to dominate the stage, with Monica Potae, of Milton, the runner-up, Chelsea Collier, of Hamilton, third, Sue Turner, of Aria, fourth, and fifth was Te Kuiti’s Hanatia Tipene.
Tipene, also now in a teaching career, is the only other person apart from Henare and Alabaster, and now Stevens, to have won the title since 2008.
Stevens, who had to pull out of a World Championships New Zealand team selection series – with her baby due in the same week as the big event in Scotland – won the Junior title at Te Kuiti in 2016, while husband Ricci won the following year, before winning the Senior final in 2018.
Wairoa shearer becomes champion intermediate shearer
It was a successful Championships for the family shearing firm of John and Raylene Kirkpatrick, with another of the team, Bruce Grace, a nephew from Wairoa, winning the Intermediate final.
Grace was also acclaimed as Shearing Sports New Zealand’s No 1-ranked shearer for the season.
John Kirkpatrick, three-times winner of the open final, won Saturday night’s open plate, for the six semi-finalists who missed out on the final.
Sam Fletcher, from Mount Maunganui, and Kaivah Cooper, of Napier, finished second and third in the Novice final won on Friday by Trent Alabaster, of Taihape.
King Country shearer Clay Harris, of Piopio, won the Senior shearing final to become the only shearer or woolhandler to win both a Golden Shears and a New Zealand Shears title this year.
Harris won by about 1.5pts from Masterton shearer Adam Gordon, who was named No 1-ranked Senior for the season, and who is the brother of Cushla Abraham and open finalist David Gordon.
Third place went to Tama Nahona, who shears with open runner up Toa Henderson in Northland, and who was first to finish the Senior final, shearing the 12 sheep in 12min 1.61sec.
What a weekend for women shearers
It was a major Championships for female shearers, among whom was Emma Martin, of Gore, who won the Junior shearing final on Friday.
On Saturday, Martin then spearheaded the all-female Canterbury-Marlborough Development Circuit teams to a comfortable win over three male counterparts from the King Country.
Martin, Lydia Thomson, of Rangiora, and South Island-based Robin Krause, from Germany, were the three best performers in the Canterbury-Marlborough circuit, Thomson also becoming the No 1-ranked Junior shearer for the season with nine wins in 19 finals.
It was quality that won the day, with the three finishing 1, 2 and 3 individually and their opponents, cousins Coby Lambert and Cody Lambert, and Devon Ball, of Te Kuiti, 4, 5, and 6, as Canterbury-Marlborough won by a wide margin of 20.589pts.
With points based on a time and quality penalties system, thus the lowest combination winning, the women scored 53.03, with the blokes’ total blowing out to 73.619pts.
Coby Lambert was first to finish, in 2min 48.67sec, but Martin, who won the New Zealand Shears Junior final on Friday was next, 13 seconds later, ultimately finished at the top as her team claimed the best three sets of points overall.
The 27-year-old Martin had on Friday become only the third female to win a New Zealand Shears title, and the first in 13 years since Sarah Goss’s win in 2010.
Goss (now Hirini) then embarked on a rugby career which lead to an Olympic Games Rugby Sevens gold medal and the winning of the Women’s Rugby World Cup last year.
Martin has undertaken 14 competitions this season, with one more to go at the Mackenzie A and P Show in Fairlie on April 10.
It’s almost a third of the shows on the Shearing Sports New Zealand Calendar, with a goal now of finishing the season having qualified for the finals at all of the shows in which she’s competed, and with a sixth win.
Having won national full-wool title events at Waimate and Lumsden in the South Island, she’s proven more than up to it in second-shear competitions of the North Island.
Martin was second at Taumarunui, fourth at Apiti and won at Pahiatua on successive days at the end of February, and was fourth at the Golden Shears a week later.
Woodville mum of five months Laura Bradley, 25, a senior shearer with a history of junior and intermediate success, won the Women’s shearing final on Friday, by just 0.105 points from open-class shearer and former Golden Shears lower-grades shearing and woolhandling champion Sarah Hewson, of Blenheim, who was first to finish and shore the six sheep in 8min 28.61sec.
More family heritage as young guns blaze
Meanwhile, another Alabaster from Taihape has found his way onto the New Zealand Shears honours board with victory in Saturday’s novice shearing final.
Trent Alabaster, 17, who left Whanganui Collegiate last September to start a shearing career, is cousin of lambshearing record breaker and 2018 New Zealand Shears junior champion Reuben Alabaster, and nephew of former World woolhandling Champion and multiple New Zealand Shears open woolhandling Champion Sheree Alabaster.
They all continue a competition-shearing heritage starting with Sheree’s father, the late Ray Alabaster, who shore at the first Golden Shears in 1961 and in multiple Golden Shears open finals, without winning the big title.
New Zealand completes 3-0 series win, and a legend returns
In another feature of the Shears, Leon Samuels and Rowland Smith completed a 3-0 Wools of New Zealand Shearing Series win over the Wales Development team of Gethin Lewis and Dylan Jones.
Then, in another, shearing legend Sir David Fagan, President of the New Zealand Shears society and national body Shearing Sports New Zealand, returned triumphantly to the competition board to win a two-person Whanau relay with son and open-class shearer Jack Fagan.
Sir David retired from competition shearing in 2015, with more than 640 open-class shearing titles to his name – more than three times that of the next most successful.
OPINION: Kem Ormond is busy with onion seed trays & preparing the ground for strawberries.