Ahipara surfer Jade Nias Phillips says surfing will stay her main sport after she won the Year 7 girls' title as surfing made its AIMS Games debut.
Ahipara surfer Jade Nias Phillips says surfing will stay her main sport after she won the Year 7 girls' title as surfing made its AIMS Games debut.
Shipwreck Bay’s notorious surf breaks are renowned around the world, and growing up surfing in them has seen Ahipara youngster Jade Nias Phillips triumph in her age group as the sport entered the AIMS Games for the first time.
Jade eked every single drop out of her three-day Zespri AIMS Games experience recently, heading back to Ahipara with amazing memories, a gold medal and some solid ideas of what she can try next year. It’s likely she’ll stick with surfing as her core sport, mind you – the 11-year-old is talented, bordering on ridiculous.
She won the Year 7 girls’ title as surfing made its AIMS debut in the small but well-groomed waves off Tay Street Beach in Mount Maunganui, adding to her overall under-14 crown at last summer’s Billabong Grom Series.
Jade relished the waves but found special pleasure in having her Whangārei-based grandmother Peggy on the beach watching.
“I really enjoyed it because my Nana got to come down and watch me – she normally calls me and says ‘well done’ but she doesn’t always get to watch my comps so it was really cool to have her here,” Jade said.
Growing up surfing at Shipwreck Bay, gave Ahipara 11-year-old Jade Nias Phillips the skill and expertise to win her age group as surfing made its debut at the recent AIMS Games
In between her Tay Street Beach sets, Jade – who turns 12 this week – got to experience much of the flavour of the annual week-long tournament, which features 12,900 young athletes competing across 27 sporting codes.
Family friends managed to get her into the star-studded opening ceremony, while she also visited rock climbing and netball.
“I’ve never been to a tournament this big. I went and watched the rock climbing and the netball – I love to see kids doing other sports and seeing what they do because I like to try new sports too.”
With her grace and style on a board, it’s no surprise that one of her other current sports – alongside swimming – is dancing. Jade performs jazz, contemporary and lyrical dance, and finds the crossover to surfing really beneficial.
“I just came back from a dance comp and then I went straight into surfing – it’s really easy for me to switch into different sports and dancing really helps me with my balance.”
Although Monday’s waves were marginal for competition, an overnight wind swell kicked up on Tuesday and groomed the half-foot waves into decent competition standard.
Jade held off Mount Maunganui Intermediate local Savannah Dawes, with Ōtamarākau School’s Pippi Adams coming third, and Whangamatā Area School’s Charlotte Oswald finishing fourth.
“It was actually quite fun – I just stayed busy and got my waves and didn’t try to do big turns because I knew the waves weren’t there. I thought I at least came second but I was really confident that I’d done well,” Jade said.
Event organiser Andrew Fredrickson, from Mount Maunganui College, said Jade’s long trek from Ahipara was particularly noteworthy, as was Arlia Wing coming all the way from Casebrook Intermediate in Christchurch.
”Competitors have all had a great time. It’s been a good vibe. One of the highlights from an organisational point of view is we’ve had our Mount College students really step up and take ownership of the event,” he said.
The Mount College students were the judges, the MCs, they recorded the scores, updated the scoreboard, issued rashies, were beach marshalling, making announcements on the PA system, and running games for the kids.
”They’ve had treasure hunts, they’ve had quizzes, sandcastle building competitions, running races. You can see that the kids have been really into it.”
Fredrickson said there had been “awesome support from the parents” and he was looking forward to building on this year’s success for surfing at the 2025 Zespri AIMS Games.
