March! Wow what a busy month!

Well it is safe to say that March was a very busy month. I have to admit that I was a lot more busy than I expected but all worth it in the long run. Between Cricket final games, Crankworx, and then getting sick, it all happened and was fun to say the least.

Let's start out with Cricket, everyone's favourite sport (I say with sarcasm and jest). March brought to my team some finals action. We played our last round robin game, which in theory was a quarter final. We won that, and I also did reasonably well, picked up 4 wickets and also included in that, a Hat-Trick which is three consecutive wickets. It does not happen very often, infact, quite rare. We won that game which moved us onto the Semi-Final, which just so happened to be against that very same team. We were rewarded too, we got to play on the hallowed ground here in Rotorua, Smallbone Park. We batted first and we were in trouble early, lost lots of wickets and didn't get many runs on the board, we were in dire straights. Change of innings came and we were a mix of scared and also fired up, ready to take it to the opposition and do our absolute best to win. We started off well, very conservative and did not let many runs get going. We managed to take a few wickets too, but one batsman just stuck in and kept going, managing to bat the whole innings. Personally for me, that game was another highlight, I took another 4 wickets, and came very close to picking up a 5 wicket bag, but unfortunately they just got over the line. Rounding out the Cricket season, we ended with Prizegiving, that was such a good night, all of the club coming together to celebrate the successes of each individual and team that we have. I was the MC for the night and it went super smooth, very honoured to be able to be part of the club!

Moving onto Crankworx, an absolute blast of a festival! For those of you not knowing what it is, it is an international Mountain Bike Festival that goes to four different countries. This year, 2023, it starts here in Rotorua, New Zealand, then in a few weeks time will be in Cairns, Australia, and then again in a few weeks in Innsbruck, Austria, finally finishing the festival in its home, Whistler, Canada. I have been involved with Crankworx here in Rotorua since 2016, I started as a volunteer and then got asked to work at the event and have ever since. Anyway, Crankworx Rotorua 2023 was a huge hit, smashed expectations and was fun to top it off. What was my job you ask, well, I was on the Ops team again, however in a slightly different capacity, I was based on Sport Ops which is a small part of the Ops team, but they look after the courses and are starters of races and so on. For me, I was part of the Slopestyle team, the Slopestyle athletes are the ones who put their body on the line most often doing flips and spins, and to top it off generally 30 foot in the air at the same time too. For me I spent most of my time at the top of the course, in the starters position, I would make sure that all of the marshals were in position and also making sure that the track was clear for all of the riders to ride. What was really cool about this type of position for me is that I have done this type for thing before, so all of the riders knew me and made it super easy when they needed stuff. Overall the best part of the festival, was that our event was the last one to be broadcast, which means it was beamed out to hundreds of thousands of people on Red Bull TV. Overall as a whole, Crankworx went off without a hitch! It was the first festival that I have been apart of where there were no major schedule changes due to weather, which was such a blessing. To finish off my Crankworx week, I unfortunately got sick, I was not well and it just so happened that I wasn't the only one, so instead of heading back to work straight away, I was in bed recovering from my sickness.

Overall I would say that my March was quite busy and productive. It was about as successful as I would have hoped and it was even better cause I got to spend time with my extended Whanau, my Cricket brothers, and the wider mountain biking community. Aside from getting sick at the end, it means that I move forward into the Autumn and Winter with a cup very full and ready for a cooler winter, where I hope that I can get in as much riding as possible.

Photo Credit: Clint Trahan @clinttrahan

Photo Caption: This is me standing on top of one of the features on the Slopestyle Course with Emil Johansson.