The historic Huntington Beach Junior Lifeguard exchange to New Zealand was established in 1979. The trip is focused around lifesaving and cultural education. Please use this link for the application for the 2027/2028 Exchange Team.
The process includes an application and in-person interview with the coaches to be selected for this prestigious honor.
Tentative Dates:
Aug/Sep 2026: Team Application and Selection
Oct 2026-Dec 2027: Team Trainings
July 2027: NZ in HB
Dec 2027/Jan 2028: HBJG in NZ
Tentatively, we will be hosting New Zealand's Piha and Tairua Lifeguard Teams in summer of 2027. Our team will travel to New Zealand in December 2027/January 2028. There are plenty of logistics and expenses that go into making this trip happen. There will be a variety of opportunities for fundraising over the next few year. We hope our Junior Lifeguard families and community will support this team as they prepare for this amazing opportunity.
HBJG New Zealand Coaches and Team Members
Captain Jachin Hamborg
Amelia Garrard
Finn Ryder
Nathan Bradbury
Grant Brehm
Kacey Anderson
Brooklyn Arie
Brandon Bartlett
Eliot Bravenec
Ethan Brown
Reed Chappelear
Easton Ebmeyer
Kieran Gonzalez
Kennedy Jones
Nate Eich
Abella Levassiur
Olivia Frembgen
Kaia Balocco
Dean Soldan
Isabel Spak
Daniel Pearce
Peter Stevens
James Stevens
Allison Tackmann
Liam Timmermans
Elise Theriault
Grady Wright
Victoria Villalobos
Trevor Villalobos
New Zealand
TESTIMONIALS
2013
"On behalf of Mathew, Erin & myself I would like to thank the HBJG instructors, and the hosting families for accommodating our team of junior guards from Tairua, New Zealand. We are extremely privileged to be spending two weeks in the HBJG programme which I know to be one of the best in the world.
Tairua beach is a 1.4km stretch of beautiful white sand on the north east coast of New Zealand.
Tairua is only a small town of around 2,000 permanent residents, however this population swells to around 20,000 people over the summer holiday period. Most of our team live in neighboring larger cities and travel to Tairua on weekends and holidays with their families to patrol the beach and enjoy the other activities that make Tairua a great place. Our team are all volunteers (as are the majority of NZ guards), so we are looking forward to experiencing HB which conducts more rescues in one year than the whole of NZ does in one year, has a junior guard programme 10 times the size of ours, and has professional and well trained guards and instructors.Thank you again for having us, and we look forward to seeing you all very soon!"- Sean Ridler Tairua Surf Lifesaving Team
2016
"On behalf of the Tairua exchange students and our surf club we would just like to say, sincerely thank you very much for your the past two weeks and the opportunities of which you provided for our students. Once again this exchange has proven to be extremely beneficial to the students. All of your individual efforts combined contributed to something that these students will never ever experience again. They have made life long friends, memories and learnt a tonne of information they did not already know.
A sincere thanks goes out to your families, we witnessed it first hand but our NZ parents were extremely impressed and thankful their children were in safe hands during our stay. They are extremely excited to return the favor in December hosting your students. Please pass on my thanks to everyone of your instructors. Our students were extremely overwhelmed as to how good your instructors are at what they do. The atmosphere they create with your kids is something special and for our students to be apart of that was an eye opener for them all. Right now, I am reminiscing the good times and memories from this exchange. It is extremely hard to switch back into ‘work mode’ after such a positive and enjoyable time. We now look forward to preparing and hosting for your visit."- Matt Kerr, Club Captain, Trust Waikato Tairua Surf Life Saving Club (Inc.)
