ShowQuest Champions:

Western Heights has an incredible tradition of winning. We would have to be one of the most successful schools anywhere, with a record of excellence across numerous disciplines and endeavours.

We have been National Champions in Ripper Rugby and Jump Jam year after year. In Jump Jam, we achieved the highest score in the competition's history across Australasia. Think about that for a moment - those are awesome achievements, but we almost take them for granted.

We win or at least place in nearly every West Auckland sports competition, and then take special awards, such as the Kindness Cup in the Krypton Factor Competition. We also excel in EPro8 and chess - we even had a National Chess champion here a few years ago.

We won the National ShowQuest Award for Best New School in our inaugural year of entry, the Supreme Individual Performer Award - presented to Ella Taylor - and have now claimed First Place in the Junior Category at ShowQuest Auckland, competing against primary and intermediate schools from across the province.

The success is due to our fabulous, inspiring, dedicated and caring staff. They are a diverse group with diverse passions, and they share those with our children, ensuring all our children have a great range of opportunities to participate, compete, and shine.

We work hard to instil confidence in our children, encouraging them to have a go, to believe in themselves, and to persevere to achieve success.

Annette Pram and Nicole Spanhake have worked tirelessly with their crew of 65 performers. They gave up weekends and evenings to make costumes, train their Glee Crew and ensure everything possible was done to achieve success. And what success it was. Many of our teachers and parents were there, and we were filled with awe, deeply moved, and then filled with pride and joy as we witnessed their outstanding performance and incredible result: First Place!

Thank you to everyone who played their part. It was a 12-hour day for most of our performers, and even longer for some. That they still had the energy, joy and pizazz at the end of a long day cooped up inside the Aotea Centre is some testament to their commitment and enthusiasm.

We will have official video and photos to share in due course. In the meantime, the best we have is a zoomed-in version downloaded from Facebook LiveStream.