WHS Newsletter | Issue 4.9 | 13 December 2024

Principal's Message

Kia ora and welcome to the end of the 2024 school year. Although it has been a short week for students, it has been a wonderful week of celebrating 2024 at Wakatipu High School.

The Branches Camp was an extraordinary success, and the numerous stories I’ve heard from parents and students about the friendships forged, the resilience developed, and the growth experienced have once again reminded us all of why the camp is so vital to our students and our community. A huge thanks to all the staff, contractors, and community members who ensured the safe and smooth running of the camp and the in-school programme, and once again thank you to the Branches Trust, WHSF and Uncle Jack and the Leslie Hutchins Conservation Foundation Trust for the incredible financial support that keeps costs down for families and the school. Please take a moment to view the 2024 Branches Camp video below and a reminder that next year, there is a Branches Muster, offering parents the opportunity to get a glimpse of what Branches is all about (see below for more details from the Branches Trust)

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we held our Year 9 and Year 10 Prizegivings, respectively. These are two of the most significant events of the year, and it was fantastic to hear about the students' achievements from their Semester 2 classes and throughout the year. It was wonderful to have so many parents in attendance for these celebrations. See below for the full list of prizewinners, and congratulations to all the students who received awards. Reports were sent out to junior parents and students earlier this week so be sure to have a look at those to reflect on the academic success of the year that’s been as well as consider any changes that students may need to make in anticipation of 2025. Well done to everyone who strived for their own level of personal excellence throughout the year. Principal’s recognition letters were also sent out yesterday, and as per my letter, my sincere thanks to all those students who have consistently lived the Wakatipu Way both in and out of the classroom. 

On Tuesday evening, we held the Graduation ceremony for the Class of 2024. It was a great evening to hear about this extraordinary year group's future endeavours and also to mix and mingle. As the Class of ‘24 represent our future doctors, lawyers, politicians, psychologists, architects, engineers, builders, hairdressers, and more, there is no doubt that this cohort will have an impact locally, regionally, nationally, and globally, and our future is certainly in good hands. A separate email with the Graduation Citations and Video will be sent out to Year 13 students and their families next Monday, 16 December.

The year has been filled with highlights, many of which can be found in our annual School Magazine below. A huge thank you to everyone who contributed to its publication. Be sure to have a read through, and if you wish to purchase a physical copy of this Magazine, please complete this form by Tuesday 17 December. 

To those not returning to WHS, we wish you every success in your future endeavours and thank you for your effort and support of the school. We hope that you will keep in touch with the school and please join our Alumni Foundation to ensure you’re kept abreast of future events and opportunities to get involved. If you are no longer needing your uniform, a reminder to please donate this back to the school (there is a dropbox at reception), so that we may pay it forward to another family and student who may require the support. 

For those returning next year, please take note of the key dates and helpful information for 2025 just below. 

Eleven students and two teachers departed earlier today on their World Challenge Trip to Nepal (see photo below) and on 5 January, twelve students and two staff head over to Aspen, Colorado as part of the Aspen Exchange. 

The action at WHS has continued on right through to the end of the year. Congratulations to to Lucy Boniface and Manuella Pedrosa Sanches who were recently on the Mountain Club podcast with host Clare Irons, you can listen to the podcast on Apple or Spotify. Congratulations also go to our Get2Go team who finished 4th in the country, and to our Senior Touch team that finished 11th in the Nation, the school’s best placing ever. Read about this and more in what is once again, a packed newsletter to round out 2024. 

To all the students, parents, staff and WHS community, I hope you have a relaxing and enjoyable summer break and get to spend time with family and friends doing the things you love. 

Ngā mihi nui,

Oded Nathan
Principal/Tumuaki

Helpful Information for the Start of 2025

We look forward to welcoming our students to WHS in 2025. Please read the information below to prepare for the start of the school year.

Key Dates

School Portal - Change of Address

The Wakatipu High School Portal has moved to a new address: https://wakatipu.school.kiwi.

Your existing username and password will remain unchanged. If you encounter any difficulties accessing the new portal, please contact the school office at office@wakatipu.school.nz.

The old portal will be decommissioned next week, please update your bookmarks to the new address.

Year 9 and 10 Prizegiving

We celebrated our Year 9 and Year 10 students this week at our end-of-year prizegiving ceremonies. These events are our most significant and formal occasions of the year and aim to recognise and celebrate the academic excellence, leadership qualities, service, and various accomplishments of our students. We would like to congratulate all the deserving recipients, a complete list of prizewinners is below.

2024 School Magazine

​The 2024 edition of the WHS Magazine is available to view via the link below. Should you wish to purchase a hard copy, please complete this form by Tuesday 17 December. 

Branches Wrap-up

Another year, another unforgettable edition of the iconic Branches Camp!  Organising this camp requires extensive resources, with planning beginning nearly at the start of the school year. Although it may seem like a lot of effort, it pays off when students arrive at the incredible Upper Shotover Valley for their 7 days of activities. From the thrill of rafting to Deep Creek to the challenge of the Lochnagar trek with a heavy pack, every moment is a chance to push boundaries and discover hidden strengths. Cooking under pressure in the kitchen with hungry students waiting, fending off possums while sleeping under a tarp on SAR, and supporting the farm through the wetland planting project. However, this camp offers more than just activities! It teaches the importance of building positive relationships among a diverse group of students, rather than relying solely on your close friends. It encourages personal growth in managing yourself when faced with the camp's challenges. It also emphasizes that nature surpasses humankind, teaching patience and positivity—no complaining allowed!

The camp thrives thanks to community support, and we are incredibly grateful for it. A special thank you to the Branches Station, Branches Trust, Leslie Hutchins Conservation Foundation Trust, WHS Foundation and Uncle Jack for the support. And of course, thank you to all of our staff and contractors who worked tirelessly to make this camp possible!

A huge thanks to Brendan O'Donnell and Jack Smillie for the amazing work on the film (check it out below) you've really captured the magic of Branches.

Discover the Magic of Branches with a Guided Self-drive Tour

The Branches Charitable Trust is hosting an exclusive, guided self-drive tour to the breathtaking Branches Station in March 2025. This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity takes you on a scenic journey along Skippers Canyon Road, with a first-hand experience of this historic station.

There a just 20 spots available,  be sure to secure your place. Email branchestrust@gmail.com to book.

Safe Travels to Our World Challenge Nepal Team

A group of 11 senior students and 3 staff took off for an adventure of a lifetime to Nepal this morning. This trip is a total of 3 weeks away and the students will be doing numerous community service activities such as rebuilding schools and assisting in the education of children in local villages, exploring amazing parts of Nepal, and getting immersed in local culture. 

We wish the group an enjoyable and safe trip and look forward to hearing about their experiences and the positive impact they will make during their time there.

Celebrating Academic Excellence: A Tribute to Our Aspiring Mathematicians

Students in latest Climbing Guidebook

With the latest Queenstown Climbing Guidebook out, it’s awesome to see so many students crushing it and repping the outdoor climbing life! 
Massive shoutout to Lucy Sinclair and Oscar McCartney for being absolute legends—hanging off ridiculously hard climbs just to look good for the camera (and they nailed it). To Georgia Chinn, Tayah Vivian, Marin McGlynn, Charlie Mitchell, and Ellana Badenhop—you’re officially guidebook famous now. Keep climbing like rockstars!

Big thanks to ex-students Alex Booker and Rupert Gardiner (yep, Rupert, it has been a while 😊), and to the sneaky ex students quietly featuring in the book: Zandrei Elliott, James Glover, Hilton and Azaria Briscoe. 

This over 300 pages thick guidebook is the reference for the Queenstown region and hosts over 1600 climbs on rock, ice, boulders and mountains! A great Xmas present to discover the vertical world around Queenstown. Proceeds go back to the local climbing club. 
Available from most outdoor shops in town: Basecamp, Bivouac, NZ Shred, Small Planet!

Sport and Active Recreation News

Athletics

The New Zealand Secondary School Track, Field and Road Race Champs were held in Timaru over two and a half days from Friday 6th to Sunday 8th December. WHS had 4 athletes competing against top competitors from across the country. The calibre of athletes was extremely high, with a number of National records broken. Congratulations to James Weber who earned a bronze medal in the Senior Boys 3000m - the fist male from WHS to ever get a medal at the NZSS Athletics Champs! This was an incredible achievement as a first year Senior (year 11), having gone into the race seeded around 18 out of 24 racers. James also took 9 seconds off the Southland record. He then followed this up with a 4th and PB in the 1500m. Siena Mackley also performed highly, earning two top 10 placings in the Senior Girls 1500m and 3000m, setting a new Southland record in the latter. The two other WHS athletes were Finn Bell (800/1500m) and Bryn Veint (100m sprint/ 110m hurdles/ 300m hurdles) - with Finn progressing to the semi finals in the 800m. Overall it was a positive and exciting champs in perfect running conditions. Thank you to Neville Britton for his continued support of our athletes!

James Weber

• 3rd Senior Boys 3000m - new Southland Record
• 4th Senior Boys 1500m - new PB

Siena Mackley

• 6th Senior Girls 3000m - new Southland Record
• 8th Senior Girls 1500m - new PB

Tennis

The 2024 Junior National Tennis Championships were held in Auckland last weekend. Congratulations to Dan Milburn who was the 16U Boys Champion! Earlier in the week Dan also joined forces with brother Kai Milburn to take out the 18U Doubles title (with Kai also winning the 18U Singles).

Adventure Racing

The Torpedo7 Get2Go National Finals were held at the Hillary Outdoors Education Centre at Tongariro from Monday 2nd - Friday 6th December for an action-packed 5 days of challenges. A huge congratulations to the team of Oli Watson, Coen Banks, Seb Carlson, Caitlyn Purdue, Keira Redden, Lexi McLeod, Izzy Carr and Hadyn Carter on their 4th place finish, against the top 12 teams in the country!

The first 2 days of challenges were designed to test their team work abilities, thinking skills, and physical ability. The team excelled at the bike skills - and were one of the only schools to score on the tricks and balance. The team were also in the top 2 for high ropes and rock climbing (despite Coen nearly getting lifted off the ground, or kidnapped as he called it, by his belayer Seb) as well as the gruelling paddle, run, and paddle relay. The team worked incredibly well together, always in positive spirits. Day 3 was the multi-sport day, involving a 2km paddle each, followed by a 10km forest run - in which the team picked off 5 other teams to come in third! This was followed by a 50 minute mountain bike, and another 90 minute forest run (ending in the blazing heat). Day 4 was drizzly and cold for the 6.5 hour rogaine in the Tongariro National Park. The team had near perfect navigation with Lexi and Oli nailing every checkpoint within 1-2 m (the allowance being 50m). There are no physical check points, with the instructor checking these via GPS. On day 5, with sore bodies and minds, the team had to complete another 8 challenges over a 10km run. The team finished the week in 4th place, just missing out on the top 3 finish. Congratulations also to Seb who made the dream team selected by the event instructors as the “rising star. A huge thank you to team managers Emma Purdue and Bruce McLeod for their support during the gruelling week!

Touch

The WHS Mixed A touch team travelled up to Rotorua for the 2024 NZSS National Touch Champs. The tournament saw 93 teams from across Aotearoa New Zealand come together to compete across the 3 day event (Fri 6th - Sun 8th) - the biggest Secondary Schools yet. The team survived the scorching heat, brought the good vibes, and of course played some awesome touch to finish 11th in the country.

Friday saw the start of the pool rounds where WHS had a clean sweep of the day, winning 4 from 4 games. On Saturday they won their final pool game to finish up top of their pool. The team then played a preliminary final against Whanganui High School where they went down 3-6. Their quarter final was a nail biter with the team beating Waimea College by 1 try. On Sunday the team played their semi final game against Rolleston College (aiming to make top 10) which ended up a draw on the whistle. The game moved to drop off, ended up 3v3 before Rolleston snuck in a try to take the win. The team’s final game was a playoff for 11th/12th against Hutt Valley High School which WHS won comfortably with a final score of 8-3 to finish 11th out of 43 Mixed teams, a huge achievement! 

A huge thank you to coaches Jamie Natapu and Nick Saunders for their mahi throughout the season, and team managers Conner Hamlin and Jackie Rule for the tournament support. A big few days of touch with a cancelled flight thrown into the mix. Thank you also to the team’s generous sponsors who helped reduce the cost of this expensive tournament - as well as man-behind-the-scenes Steve McIsaac. We are extremely appreciative of your support!

• Te Kura o Te Whānau ā Apanui won 12-0
• Queen Elizabeth College won 8-2
• Te Wharekura o Manaia won 7-1
• Mount Maunganui College won 5-3
• Howick College 8-6
• Whanganui High School Mixed won 6-3
• Waimea College won 6-5
• Rolleston College lost 10-9
• Hutt Valley High School won 8-3
• Finished 11th

Cricket

The Junior Boys Cricket Team travelled to Oamaru for the three day St Kevin's College Junior Boys Cricket Tournament. The team squared off against Southland Boys' High School Colts on day one and after batting first set a total of 159 all out with contributions from opener Ty Walker 40 and Jacob O’Neill 57. Jacob then backed his batting performance up with an economical 4 for 27 but unfortunately that wasn't enough to prevent SBHS surpassing the total in 29.3 overs. Day two saw the boys take on the hosts St Kevin's College. Batting first against a strong bowling attack the boys could only muster 73 with Quinn Samways top scoring on 15. Jacob O’Neill again doing his best with the ball picking up 2 wickets for 2 runs but ultimately defending a small total proved difficult with St Kevin's picking off the runs with 5 wickets in hand. The final day saw a match up against Taieri College. Bowling first this time Conor Clarke picked up 4 for 37 against a very strong batting side that amassed 268 in their 40 overs. A great learning experience for the boys who played against 3 of the top four teams at the tournament. Special thanks to Walter Clarke and Dean Dolan for managing the team on and off the field. 

Thank You!

A huge thank you to the coaches, managers, referees, van drivers, sponsors, parents and supporters for your contributions to sport at WHS this year. We all know the positive effect sport has on the lives of our rangatahi, and the impact you leave on our students is invaluable and immeasurable. In 2024 we had over 800 students engaged in structured sport or physical activity, this simply would not have been possible without the support of our volunteer community - so thank you. The Sports Department will be clocking off until Monday 20th January. Have a wonderful summer and Christmas with your whānau, and we hope to see many of you next year for another great year of sport!

Sian Horn
Director of Sport

Arts Department News

Jazz Combo Performance

Last Saturday afternoon the WHS Jazz Combo played at Ayrburn outside the newly opened Bakehouse. It was a perfect day with a large number of people there so the band had a great time and ended up playing for more than two hours. Well done to Bethany Argyle, Haru Kuroe, Louis Buchanan, Hugh Hodgson, Venice Alzaga. Huge thanks once again to Rockformation for all their continued support and, in particular, Justin Eeden and Connor Willimas who set up the equipment on the day.

YAMI

With a reputation for luring some of Aotearoa's finest musical talent along with industry heavyweights, YAMI (Youth + Adults in the Music Industry) is preparing to celebrate 10 years of delivering the high-aiming Wanaka summit.  Held at the start of NZ Music Month (May 3 + 4) past summits have featured (among others) such luminaries as Troy Kingi, Anika Moa, Ladi6, Barnaby Weir, Tiki Taane, Moana Maniapoto, Jon Toogood, Julia Deans, Anna Coddington, Dave Dobbyn, Kings, Bella Kalolo, plus members of The Beths, L.A.B., Fat Freddy's Drop, Fly My Pretties, The Phoenix Foundation and Shapeshifter.

Next year's line up will be announced in February and organisers say a wide diversity of talents will be represented at the May summit.  All Earlybird tickets have already sold out but standard places for Junior (ages 10 to 13 years), Youth (ages 14 to 18 years) and Adult (ages 19 to 110 years) are still available.

Participants learn to navigate the music industry with workshop and seminar topics covering performance, DJing, Songwriting, Beatmaking, Royalties and Distribution, Marketing and Management.  The bi-ennial summit was the first to welcome rangatahi and adults, with the minimum age to attend being 10 years old.  With most of the crew being volunteers, director Lynne Christie acknowledges the support from the music industry is vital. "The tutors and speakers are incredibly generous with their time and knowledge," she affirms. "They are able to tap into focussed hacks that guide talented creatives to the next level."  Yami Ambassador Barnaby Weir says he's very proud to support this summit since its beginnings in 2014. "It's not always easy being a creative. This summit shows the participants that there is a network, there is support and that each individual has a unique and powerful story to tell."

Registrations for the non-profit summit are available at Ticketfairy.  Please email us at info@yami.nz for more information including group booking discounts and Professional Development options.

You can also follow them on Facebook: facebook.com/yamisounz or IG: instagram.com/yamisounz

Exciting visits in ART

Being able to access a visiting artist is an incredible opportunity for our students to get first hand input from established artists. We hope to welcome more artists and professionals in the arts space in the future. If you would like to share your experience and knowledge please get in touch with Arts Coordinator Stine Cooper scooper@wakatipu.school.nz.

Te Atamira - is a multi-purpose arts and cultural space at Remarkables Park Town Centre - check out what is happening at Te Atamira here

Te Wahi Toi - Nau mai, haere mai, Te Wāhi Toi is the meeting place and online directory for Queenstown and Wānaka’s creative community.  Find them here

Let us Know
The Arts department would like to know about any artistic achievements that students have attained outside of school be it in Drama, Dance, Music or Visual Arts. Please send details and photos to scooper@wakatipu.school.nz

Support the Arts
We are always looking for local professional performing and visual artists to visit our school and run workshops for our students. If you or someone you know is interested, please contact Mrs Cooper the Arts Coordinator at scooper@wakatipu.school.nz

Instagram Page
Follow our school’s Instagram page for recent successes or news within the school’s Arts Department at whsartdepartment.

Careerwise Connections - Support our Students

WHS Foundation

Community Notices

Queenstown Monopoly is here! Perfect for family nights or gifting this holiday season! Don’t miss out – grab your Queenstown Monopoly Edition today.

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