School Tag Team Surfing returns to Muriwai This week
Returning again in 2025 the New Zealand School Surfing Festival Presented by Muriwai Surf School is being held this week (25-27 March) at Maori Bay, Muriwai, Auckland. This exciting event will be held in a team’s format with boys and girls teams vying to become winners of the Cranch Cup.
Schools from around the country have been formulating teams over the past two months with 18 School teams of girls and boys confirmed to attend.
The Bay of Plenty region has traditionally been strong in junior surfing and the region is defending Champions of the Cranch Cup. In the 2024 edition of the event Mount Maunganui College claimed the title for the girls division while Whangamata Area School claimed the title for the boys. Their respective boys and girls teams placed second, highlighting the strength of both regions in the junior ranks.
Six Bay of Plenty school teams have entered this week’s event including Papamoa College, Whakatane High School, Onewhero Composite, Trident High School Tauranga Boys and Mount Maunganui.
New Plymouth Boys High School has a team lead by Lee Takurua and polished surfers Occy Tapara, Logan Verster, Beau Parker and Kentaro Mitchell.
Whangamata Area School is another team to field two strong teams with Harrison Biddle, Jay Tingle, Manu Roberts and Lincoln Easton. Whilst the girls team includes Lola Groube, India Kennings, Zahlia Wyper and Shantel Curtis.
Mount Maunganui College has a youthful boys team that will be aiming for final day honours with Zen Mouldey, Zade Pitkethly, Jaxon Willows, Remy Sale and Sol Fritchley. In the girls tag it will be Sage Fritchley, Maddie Tod, Izzy Evans and Molly Leary looking to back up their result from 2024.
Gisborne Boys High and Opunake High School will make the journey north to Muriwai and they are joined by a number of Auckland schools. Takapuna Grammar, Westlake Boys, Rosmini and Rangitoto College have all entered teams as have St Dominics, Liston College, and new to the event Kaipara College.
The Cranch Cup is being awarded in honour school surfing stalwart Carol Cranch who instigated the New Zealand school surfing programme in the late 80s with the formation of the Scholastic Championships. Cranch was responsible for the development of numerous top level surfers around the country and was one of the founding promoters of the World Grommet Titles which ultimately morphed into the ISA World Junior Championships.
Cranch spent her final years based at Gisborne before passing away in early 2022. Sister Janice is currently back from Australia and intends on making the trip to Muriwai to check out the action next week on behalf of her sister.
The NZ School Surfing Festival has been a welcome addition to the school sport calendar and is being held during Summer Tournament Week with support from School Sport New Zealand.
Team surfing takes place at the New Zealand Club Championships in New Zealand but is uncommon nationally outside that event. Teams of five boys and four girls make up each team. Surfers compete in a relay format known as tag team, the team having an overall allotted amount of time to get their scoring rides and return to the beach.
Being a festival event on the School Sport New Zealand calendar, the event has Cup and Plate rounds. This helps promote surfing to a wider number of schools that are at different stages of developing their surfing teams.
“Surfing is traditionally an individual sport so the aim of this event is to bring schools together to participate in a team environment, an aspect which is so often missing in standard surfing events. This gives schools an event to target and test themselves against other schools from around the country, whether they are at the top end or starting their surfing journey,” said Surfing New Zealand’s Ben Kennings.
The 2025 New Zealand School Surfing Festival will take place at Maori Bay, Muriwai Beach, Auckland from 8:00am – 4:00pm on Tuesday and Wednesday 25-27th of March.
Further Information
For further information on the 2025 New Zealand School Surfing Festival please contact Surfing New Zealand’s Ben Kennings on 021 2278732 or email benkennings@surfingnz.co.nz.
Event details
Please visit Liveheats.com/SurfingNewZealand for live scores and results
Imagery
This will be distributed free of charge from each event. Please contact Ben Kennings for further details.
High resolution action images of the surfing will be available to media free of charge.
Follow the event
Follow the action via social media – @surfingnz across TikTok , Facebook, Instagram and X. Follow the hashtag #nzschoolsurffest and #schoolsportnewzealand
Surfing New Zealand are proudly partnered by:
Sport New Zealand
ACC
Sun Bum
Cookie Time, OSM, Bumper Bars
Ends
Go to Surfing New Zealand
Author: Dan Westerkamp