Napier takes the gong in Hawke’s Bay cleansweep of student shearing challenge
World record shearer Shane Ratima (left) turned commentator and stadium announcer as Sam Whitesoide (centre and Napier Boys' High School teammate won the Golden Shears Student Challenge.
Photo / Pete Nikolaison.
Two boarders at Napier Boys High School have created another page of history in their campus’s 154 years with victory in a Hawke’s Bay cleansweep of the major placings in the first event decided at the 2026 Golden Shears in Masterton.
Sam Lawson and Sam Whiteside, farmers’ sons from Ongaonga and Te Pohue respectively won the MKM Originals Student Challenge on Wednesday, the first event decided on first of the four days at this year’s Golden Shears, which incorporate the 20th World Shearing and Woolhandling Championships.
It was the first time Napier BHS had won the event, which was first held in 2018 and has been dominated by the tertiary farm cadet training farms.
This year, two boarders from Hastings school Lindisfarne College, Cooper Ellingham and Lachie Butler, claimed second place, and Pukemiro, a training scheme based just east of Dannevirke and a former winner, was third.
Napier BHS head of agriculture Rex Newman said it was about the fourth time this school had entered, and it was represented by three pairs.
He said 11 learner shearers from the school went to Masterton, nine also shearing in the Golden Shears Novice shearing heats and two in the Junior heats, with Lawson qualifying for the Novice final, having already won a Novice final, at the Dannevirke A and P Show five weeks ago.
“It’s a slow burner for us,” said Newman, but it has a mission.
Sam Whiteside (left) watches on as Napier Boys' High School teammate shearers out their school's first win in the Student Challenge, the first of 29 events to be decided at the four-dday Golden Shears and World shearing and woolhandling championships in Masterton. Photo / Pete Nikolaison.
Also now taking a leading role in the Hawke’s Bay show’s Great Raihania Shears secondary schools’ challenge in Hastings each October, Newman grew-up on a cropping and beef property in Marlborough, and didn’t shear.
“This is really showing the students an opportunity and an option I ever had,” he said.
The Napier BHS pair shore the two sheep in just under 6min 30sec, and were comfortable winners by more than seven points from Lindisfarne No 2, who beat Pukemiro by less than a point.
The second-fastest time went to Havelock North school Woodford House, but the shearers were unable to match the time with the quality points to figure among the best of the 12 teams.
The Napier BHS pair had hoped to take part in the New Zealand Rural Sports schools shearing event next week, but it clashes with one of the school’s big events of the year, the athletics sports.
Result:
Golden Shears MKM Originals Student Challenge (two sheep): Napier Boys’ High School No 1 Sam Lawso/Sam Whiteside) 23.93pts, 1; Lindisfarne College No 2 (Cooper Ellingham/Lachie Butler) 31.29pts, 2; Pukemiro (Oliver Selby/Riley Priest) 32.16pts, 3.