Margaret River Senior High School students dominated the recent Mark Richards Shield school surfing divisions of the 2024 YETI Australian Junior Surfing Titles.
Their achievements follow the school’s victory at the WA School Surfing Titles in early 2024.
After taking on the surf at Woonona Beach in New South Wales, the Margaret River students won the U19 Boys, U19 Girls, and U16 Girls categories – a show of strength in Australian junior surfing.
Kaleisha Launders and Ruby Berry placed first in the U19 Girls division, while Macklin Flynn teamed with Okie Fraser to take out the U19 Boys MR Shield. Leila Fraser and Olive Hardy also scored wins for the school in the U16 Girls.
“The students that competed in these events have undertaken a huge workload,” says Surf Coordinator Mark Meyer, who acknowledged the hard work that young athletes undertake to compete at such a high level.
“They are training every day, either surfing or in the gym whilst trying to keep up with schoolwork. Additionally, they have a massive travel demand when competing at this level.
“The students are attending comps and high-performance camps in the eastern states regularly. Then the nature of completion itself can be pretty brutal, athletes turn up to a competition after hours of travel and expenses and get knocked out after a 20-minute heat and have to go home. It forces kids to develop a unique mental maturity and resilience.”
For Olive Hardy, her success secures the young surfer a spot to represent Australia at the 2025 ISA World Junior Surfing Championship.
“Olive got an 8.38 for a single turn wave in her first heat of the competition, which brought an excitement to the spectators on the beach,” Meyer says.
“Olive is a super powerful surfer for her age and it’s going to be so fun to watch her develop over the next couple of years in U18 and women’s divisions.”
Record-breaking achievement
Margaret River Senior High School has claimed the WA School Surfing title for 19 consecutive years, with no sign of stopping their record-breaking ride.
For Hardy, who will join all the event’s winners on a prestigious honour roll alongside current and former world tour competitors, including Stephanie Gilmore, Sally Fitzgibbons, Coco Cairns, Owen Wright, Mick Fanning and Reef Heazlewood, the achievement has been a huge thrill.
“I’m just so stoked,” Hardy says. “Mum and Dad were so stoked – we were all pretty much crying.”
