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Three senior Mahurangi students will be heading to Dunedin this month to compete in what is widely regarded as the country’s top junior surfing competition, the National Scholastic Surfing Championships.
Ari O’Malley, Ziggy Neely and Taj Robinson are the first Mahu students to qualify for the five-day event, which features mixed teams from 12 regions.
They faced stiff competition to win their places in the 12-strong Auckland squad, taking part in three trials at Piha and Omaha against schools and colleges all over the region. Only one other school, Takapuna Grammar, had as many students picked for the team.
Mahu’s director of education outside the classroom and school surf coach, Mike Burton, said it was a great achievement to qualify for the Auckland team and came on top of strong results at the NZ School Championships in Raglan and the NZ School Surfing Festival in Muriwai, where they had all placed strongly.
“Ari did particularly well as he had the school ball the night before the qualifying comp,” he said. “He wasn’t going to go, but woke up, put his game face on and won it.”
The boys have all been surfing since they were at primary school and have been trying to get into the Auckland Scholastics squad for several years, and said they were stoked to all be picked this year.
“We’ve been trying for five years,” O’Malley said. “I guess we got in this year because we’re a bit older and we’ve got better.”
Burton said their achievement was even more notable, given that they didn’t have the same amount of training opportunities as some students.
“We’ve been doing surfing at the school for the past three years, but it can be difficult, because there aren’t always waves on the east coast and the competitions are all on the west coast,” he said.
“That means unless we take time off school, they’re not getting training that’s meaningful for their development. You really need a minimum of three days a week, but we get more like once a month.”
As well as the competition itself, the Mahu boys will have to brace themselves for chilly conditions – the average water temperature in Dunedin in October is just 9 degrees, six degrees colder than what they’re used to at Omaha or Mangawhai Heads.“We expect it will be freezing cold, but it’ll be fun,” Neely said.
Scholastics regional teams have to have at least one surfer in each of four divisions – Under 18, Under 16, Under 14 and Under 18 longboard. O’Malley, from Point Wells, and Neely, of Matakana, will compete in the Under 18s, while Robinson, who lives at Mangawhai, will take part in the Under 18 longboard comp.
They have been fundraising to find the $1500 they each need to get to the champs, which take place at Dunedin’s St Clair Beach from October 7 to 11, with raffles and a movie night at Matakana Cinemas.
