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Omaha’s senior surf sports team came home loud and proud after competing at the Aon NZ Surf Lifesaving Championships in Gisborne last month.
They won four medals in age group events, plus Rohan Whitaker won a silver in the masters beach sprint for the third year in a row. Team coach Scott Donaldson says it takes a lot of commitment to reach the required fitness levels just to compete at national level.
“The Omaha team’s performance was outstanding,” he says. “In some of the races, it was just one wave separating the winner from the rest of the field.”
Scott’s son Zac, who attends Mahurangi College, was competing in his first nationals. He raced in the Under 15 division, winning gold in the ‘run, swim, run’ event and bronze in the 400-metre swim.
Auckland University student Tobey Sykes won bronze in the Under 19 board race, one of the closest and toughest races of the tournament, which was run in testing conditions with swells of up to two metres. The heats, semis and final were all run on one day, involving seven races in total. Sykes started as a nipper with the Omaha Beach Surf Life Saving Club and since 2020 has worked as a paid lifeguard at beaches around Auckland during the uni holidays.
Kane Wright won the club’s fourth age group medal when he took silver in the Under 15 sprint.
Other members of the team were Oliver Gipps (Under 17), and Jayden Earley and Ben Blair, who both competed in the men’s open division.
The club feels the 2025 team’s performance augers well for the development of senior sports at Omaha.
Bay of Plenty’s Omanu took home the Allan Gardner Memorial Trophy for top overall club.
