Angela Stevens, of Napier, has won the New Zealand Shears Open woolhandling final, in the latest of a series of family triumphs in Te Kuiti for the family of 2017 world champion and three-times New Zealand Shears Open shearing champion John Kirkpatrick and wife Raylene.
Their 31-year-old daughter Angela and son-in-law, shearer and woolhandler Ricci Stevens are expecting their fourth child in late June — the woolhandler triumphing on Saturday night despite being 27 weeks pregnant.
Angela Stevens and Cushla Abraham represented New Zealand in the summer’s home-and-away transtasman series.
She’s no longer woolhandling and is now in early childhood education at Busy Bees, Havelock North, and studying for a diploma and aiming to qualify late this year.
With regular New Zealand Shears Open winners Joel Henare and Sheeree Alabaster not at the championships this year, it was a chance for a few others to dominate the stage, with Monica Potae, of Milton, the runner-up, Chelsea Collie, of Hamilton, third, Sue Turner, of Aria, fourth, and fifth was Te Kuiti’s Hanatia Tipene, also now in a teaching career and the only other person apart from Henare and Alabaster, and now Stevens, to have won the title since 2008.
