Cousins win top prizes at neighbouring Hawke's Bay schools

Cousins Grace Windhager, from Iona College, and Jess Hansen from Woodford House, are celebrating winning top academic prizes together. Photo / Paul Taylor

Winning a school's top academic prize is an achievement for anybody, but one Hawke's Bay family is celebrating a double victory.

First cousins Grace Windhager and Jess Hansen, were each awarded dux at their respective schools, Iona College and Woodford House.

The neighbouring schools in Havelock North, which have a friendly rivalry, held their prize-givings on Wednesday and Thursday nights last week.

Windhager, who went to Iona, said it was special to celebrate together, having known each other their entire lives.

"It's certainly special to be celebrating the same thing," she said.

"We placed a bet to see if we could do it," Hansen said.

"We didn't expect it, but we did it and were like, oh my god."

Windhager said it was special to have the two schools across the road from each other, both saying it was fun to have a bit of rivalry between the two.

Hansen said she had been really suited to going to Woodford, with Windhager suited to Iona.

"Both schools have worked really well for both of us."

Hansen said they study similar subjects, and so had worked together all year.

The pair were also both academic prefects, and had worked together to bring joint workshops to the schools.

"For schol (scholarship) statistics a few girls from Woodford went over to Iona every Tuesday and we did workshops with the Iona teacher, because Woodford didn't teach schol stats."

They said they had been fielding phone calls from their family, although Hansen said they were a low-key family, so it tended to be a quick "good job".

Having finished Year 13, the girls are now looking to the future.

Hansen will be heading to officer training in the army, moving to Waiouru for a year before being posted to core training.

Windhager will be moving to Wellington to study law and commerce at Victoria University, joking Hansen was doing "cooler stuff", than she was.

The pair both wanted to thank everyone who had helped them achieve the top awards, including teachers, year groups and family.