The increasingly popular women-only surf competition was started in 2021 by Holly Macdonald and Niamh Jefferson, who started the w\u0101hine-focused surf school Sea Sisters in 2020.<\/p>\n
The pair started the competition because they wanted to create a women\u2019s surfing community in Hawke\u2019s Bay.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think for women, sometimes it can be a bit nerve-racking to put yourself out there and give competing a go,\u201d Macdonald said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just about supporting each other and celebrating women\u2019s surfing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among last year\u2019s first-time entries was Esther Geerlings, who has been surfing for the past 15 years.<\/p>\n
To push herself, she set a sports goal and ended up choosing to enter a surf competition.<\/p>\n
Soon, she discussed her plan to enter Lady of the Log with a friend at a birthday party.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe dared me to go in it, so I double-dared her back. So there was no backing out after that,\u201d Geerlings said with a laugh.<\/p>\n
Esther Geerlings was among last year’s first-time competitors in Lady of the Log. Photo \/ Michael Farr<\/p>\n
She entered the beginners\u2019 category at the competition and was extremely nervous heading into her heats as the crowds gathered to watch the competition. <\/p>\n
She hadn\u2019t realised her efforts in the surf would be so visible, with the crowd watching closely from shore.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just sucked it up and went in my heat.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I never realised that when you came back out of the water, everyone cheers for you, no matter how you did.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the time, there were, like, people that I barely even knew, and then those people have actually become friends over the year after the comp, and then when we bump into each other in the surf and we talk about, are you going to go in it again?\u201d<\/p>\n
Geerlings said last year\u2019s experience has been a motivator to enter the competition each year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just been really inspiring, and you know that you\u2019re gonna have a great time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no way anything else could happen except fun and celebration and encouragement and friendships and old connections.\u201d<\/p>\n
Geerlings has been training throughout the winter with 7am surfs, where she\u2019s had to battle numb chins and ice cream headaches from the chilly water just to get her preparation in.<\/p>\n
However, just a month out from the competition, disaster struck when Geerlings chipped her fibula during a football match.<\/p>\n
Four weeks into her seven-week recovery period and with the competition just over two weeks away, Geerlings asked her physio what her chances of competing were.<\/p>\n
He gave her 50-50 odds.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said, \u2018put it this way, if you\u2019re determined and you\u2019re going to compete, you could, but you would be competing carefully\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhich means I\u2019m just gonna compete.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke\u2019s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in Britain, Germany, and New Zealand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The increasingly popular women-only surf competition was started in 2021 by Holly Macdonald and Niamh Jefferson, who started…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1561,39789,4596,127,71,1976,78,15258,9207,8130,111,139,16546,69,1118,90,1551,213,1324,10137,2558,223,61,810,1533,1354],"class_list":["post-45060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-bay","tag-compete","tag-competition","tag-despite","tag-from","tag-hawkes","tag-in","tag-injury","tag-lady","tag-log","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nothing","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-on","tag-set","tag-sports","tag-stop","tag-surfer","tag-surfing","tag-the","tag-to","tag-up","tag-will","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45060","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=45060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}