Around the Clubs

Mount Maunganui

We've got a record 54-strong team heading to Red Beach, north of Auckland, this weekend for the Owen Chapman Cup.

This is another good chance for our athletes to get some valuable competition, and two to watch out for are young swimmer Jessica Miller and beach sprinting and board paddling star Arna Wright.

The Mount Maunganui women's boat crew head out through the Whangamata surf on Monday. Photo by Jamie Troughton/Dscribe Journalism.

The junior surf programme starts up again on January 8, but in the meantime, our holiday programme has been in full swing.

As part of that, the club hosted 23 athletes from the Otumoetai Swimming Club in a week-long camp.

The gold and silver squad members, all aged 12 and under, used the opportunity to do a bit of teambuilding and learn some basic surf lifesaving skills – board paddling out to Motuotau (Rabbit) Island, body-surfing, wading and jumping off the blow hole – with the highlight being a 4km board paddle around Mauao.

The camp, organised by Mount head coach John ‘Spindles' Bryant, and his counterpart at Otumoetai Swimming Club, Stefan Swanepoel, was extremely successful, further building the links between the two clubs.

In other news, we had a quiet start to the year – the heavy rain on New Year's Eve meant the number of clients choosing to use our beautiful beach for snoozing was well down, while Patrol 3 had a relatively smooth time on New Year's Day as well.

Our women's boat crew did brilliantly at the second round of the national series in Whangamata on Monday, finishing second behind Orewa in their final.

Lastly, a big congratulations to Sam Shergold, who won the recent ‘Mount Monster' training race.

Sam blitzed the 5km sand run, 5km board paddle, 11km ski and 1.5km run to the blowhole and 400m swim back in an impressive 2hrs 31secs.

He's now earned an invite to the club's mythical Squad X.

Omanu

Omanu Beach Surf Life Saving Club and Mount Maunganui College have entered into an agreement where the club can use the college pool outside school hours.

We're going to do a feasibility study over the next year for the development of the pool, so it can be utilised all year round.

It's a really exciting opportunity for the college, the surf club and the wider community.

The pool will be open to the public during January on a trial basis and, if successful, it will also open for weekends through until April.

The entry cost will be $2 and this month will be open from 10am to 3pm, seven days a week.

There have already been spinoffs for the club – we've trained up a number of pool lifeguards and we're also running several swim programmes.

Beginner swim squad training starts again next week and runs on Tuesday and Thursday from 4-5pm, targeting 9-14-year-olds as well as adults.

Sadly, the miserable New Year weather meant we had to cancel our annual the Pak 'n Save Omanu Classic carnival, although we're hopeful of staging the feature Ian Porteous Memorial Ironman race later in the season.

Papamoa

No report.