Sunset Beach Surf Boat Crews take National Titles at the 2017 TSB Bank New Zealand Surf Life Saving Championships held in Christchurch at New Brighton Beach, 17th - 19th March 2017
The Sunset Young Guns had superb conditions and weather at New Brighton to compete for the U19 Men’s Surf Boat Short Course and Long Course Titles. Having already earned the U19 Men’s NZ Surf Boat Series Gold Medal, they were hopeful to do well at Nationals. The Sunset Hipsters were hot on their tales with Silver Medal for the U19 Men’s NZ Surf Boat Series.
The two teams from Sunset Beach have had an excellent year, trained hard and put in the hours on the Waikato River at Tuakau. Their results at the Championships were outstanding.
The Sunset Young Guns are now the NZ U19 Men’s Surf Boat Champions. They performed well over their 5 races for each event and were awarded Gold medal for the Short Course and Gold for the Long Course. The Sunset Hipsters chased hard and were awarded Silver medal in both the Short and Long Course events. This made it a clean sweep for the Sunset Beach crews.
Ted Marsh (Coach and Sweep for the Young Guns) was immensely proud, “We had quite a bit of nerves going into Nationals. It’s taken 5 years of dedication from this young team who started rowing at 14 years old to get to this standard to win the Gold Medals. Last year we settled for Silver but were determined that wasn’t going to happen this year. The wins were popular with the crowd with most of the boaties present at the ceremony having watched this team improve over the years. A huge cheer went up, congratulating them on their win”.
The Sunset Hipsters with Mikey Waldegrave as Sweep had an excellent performance to earn the silver medals. This being only their second year of rowing, we figure there must be a good amount of friendly rivalry between these two teams to enhance performance to do well.
Picture: Sunset Young Guns on the podiem in first place with Sunset Hipsters in second
