Top Kiwi golfer Ryan Fox got a first-hand example of how vital his support is for his adopted Waih\u012b Beach community at the weekend.<\/p>\n
As the world No 38 launched his sixth annual The Fox fishing and golf tournament in the Bay of Plenty town on Saturday night, metres away, veteran Waih\u012b Beach lifeguard Christiaan Maarhuis was saving a young girl\u2019s life while out training in the surf.<\/p>\n
Maarhuis was heading out for a ski paddle at around 6.45pm when he noticed two young swimmers struggling and being pulled out to sea in the half-metre swells, with the leash of a bodyboard wrapped around the young girl\u2019s neck, while her older brother tried to help.<\/p>\n
Maarhuis immediately swam over to the siblings, held the panicked young girl afloat, and removed the leash from her neck.<\/p>\n
While Maarhuis assisted the girl through the waves on her board and back into the beach, an ex-Karioitahi lifeguard swam out with fins to help her brother in.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a very close call for both of those kids,\u201d Maarhuis said, after reuniting both children with their anxious mum.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey got dragged out very quickly and were in pretty serious trouble by the time I got to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fox was on hand to congratulate Maarhuis soon afterwards, with the Waih\u012b Beach Surf Lifesaving Club one of two big local beneficiaries of the annual tournament.<\/p>\n
Over the past five years, he\u2019s helped raise more than $200,000 for the surf club and the Waih\u012b Beach Coastguard.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo kids get to spend a safe Christmas with their families because of the efforts of the lifeguards and it just really brought it home to all our tournament participants what an incredible job these two organisations do,\u201d Fox said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s such a privilege to be able to support them and to be able to see first-hand what an impact they make in our community.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Waih\u012b Beach Surf Lifesaving Club has used the funds to help support an after-hours call-out squad \u2013 which Maarhuis is involved in \u2013 while the Coastguard recently launched Gallagher Rescue, a specialist 10m Fantom RV1000 boat, with proceeds from The Fox playing a significant role in funding it.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Jamie Troughton\/Dscribe Media Services<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Top Kiwi golfer Ryan Fox got a first-hand example of how vital his support is for his adopted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":{"0":"post-186237","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-newzealand","10":"tag-nz","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}