Whangarei Boys' High School Golf Academy

The WBHS golf academy story starts in 2012 when the WBHS Old Boys Association saw an opportunity to provide a dedicated golf coaching facility at Whangarei Boys' High School. In 2013, having raised in excess of $250,000, a state of the art golf academy complete with Flightscope golf technology was completed. The facility was named the Ormond Weaver Golf Academy. In conjunction with then top Northland golf coach Quenton Diment, Old Boys and the School promoted the facility to encourage students from the school to take up the game and built on the core team of players that were already involved.

With this core group of 8 players, the academy focussed on high achievement and working hard to reach the top. In 2012, the WBHS top tier golf team completed the incredible achievement of winning the Asia Pacific Secondary Schools championship held in Melbourne. This alone was an achievement worth celebrating, but the boys were not done. They travelled to Thailand to successfully defend their world title in 2013.

Some would say that winning consecutive world championships is an incredible achievement on its own. However, the academy was not done at this point. Not long after the second world championship, an individual member of the academy achieved top level success with 17 year old Kaden Neho becoming the first Northlander in history to win the NZ Amateur stroke play championship. That same year a Year 10 student, Julian Fowler, won the Tiger Woods Junior championship in New Zealand and earned himself a trip to the world tournament in the USA. Julian is now one of the top golfers in Northland, and still at Whangarei Boys' High School.

The success being achieved was being noticed nationally and internationally. Promising young golfers, Kaiden Neho and Luke Brown were brought into the NZ Golf development system. Coach Quenton Diment was offered a top level coaching role in a large resort in China. More importantly Whangarei Boys' High School was starting to be recognised as a school of choice for golfers in Northland.

In the past 3 years, the academy has continued to go from strength to strength. There has been a rebuild in talent as the world championship team members graduated and moved on. The current Northland Senior Mens Interprovincial team contains 2 current WBHS academy members and 2 recent graduates. Luke Brown, who is one of these graduates, was last month been selected in the NZ Amateur four man team to contest the Eisenhower Amateur World Championship.

The academy currently has 26 boys enrolled. It not only caters to students from WBHS, but has boys travelling from as far away as Opononi to participate. This is a great and truly inspirational story in a rich Northland sporting history. Also one that we are keen to see enriched further into the future.

With the increasing number of golfers now in the academy, we need to ensure that the academy is adequately funded to continue to achieve success. Many of the young men that enter the academy are not from wealthy families (Whangarei Boys' High School is a decile 5 school) and as such do not have access to funding for coaching, or for equipment. Our focus though is to try and provide the coaching aspect and the equipment side will look after itself, we hope.

Your help will be most appreciated.