A small-town Otago club has beaten out the heavyweights of New Zealand rowing.
Dunstan Arm Rowing Club won the club of the year award at Rowing New Zealand's annual meeting at the weekend.
The award comes after another stellar season from the Central Otago-based club.
It was among the top clubs at every major regatta this year and returned from the national championships with six medals.
In the age-grades, it has become particularly strong in its girls crews, while its senior and masters men have also had plenty of success.
For club coach Simon Smith, who continues to have success on the water himself, it was ''pretty awesome''.
Making it even more amazing was that it remained a ''little club'' with a ''reasonably small pool of athletes''.
''We probably float under the radar a wee bit, but you're competing with huge clubs with massive resources and lots of money,'' he said.
''We try to do things on the smell of an oily rag.
''It's accumulated over the last couple of seasons; we had an amazing season last year.
''The results we've had, per size of our club and size of our membership, it's outstanding.''
A competitive training environment had been key to the success.
The rowers were constantly competing against each other at practice, both for spots in crews and different crews trying to beat each other.
It had been an 11-year process putting the structures in place and the club had reached the point where it was now just tweaking small things.
Consistent success across the board had been a notable feature.
It was not just one or two rowers, and younger ones had come in and were building on the success.
Smith said the club's focus on its entire squad, rather than just a handful of rowers, had been key.
''It's easy to get that one or two special athletes up there, because they're always going to be good.
''But to get a whole squad like we have is really good. It just shows our programme is working well and feeding new athletes into the system.
''They're learning very quick and we're getting success out of it very quickly.
''It's been 11 years in the making, 11 years of improving the programme, changing it, and now we've got something that's running really well.''
The club's mantra was ''better than before'' and improving for next year remained Smith's focus.
He felt there were still areas it could improve on and it had not achieved its goal of having a perfect race from start to finish.
Also winning awards were Otago volunteer of the year Maude O'Connell (Cromwell Rowing Club) and New Zealand secondary schools rowing association volunteer of the year Natalie Matheson (Columba College).
