For the first time, three Pasifika students will compete in the Australasian National Chess finals after winning gold at the New Zealand Power Team tournament.
Three siblings of Samoan, Niuean and Cook Island descent are breaking new ground by winning a place at the tournament, which will be held in Melbourne next month.
Tyleah, Hunter and Grayson Po'e-Tofaeono, who are 11, 10 and 8, have gone from strength-to-strength after only a year of learning to pay chess.
As part of the team at Hillsborough Primary, the trio have qualified for the National Interschool Chess Championships in Australia through winning the Auckland Regionals, Power Champions Tournament, and then nationals in Christchurch last month.
While they are the first competitors of Pacific descent to win at the national level, it is also the first time the tournament has seen more than one Pasifika player place individually.
Paul Macdonald from New Zealand Chess Power said the Po'e-Tofaeono family were breaking barriers and stereotypes when it came to playing chess.
"About 70 percent of our attendance is from Chinese background, and then these three kids turned up - Po'e-Tofaeono - and I was like 'hmm that's not the normal type of name I would see on my list' and then they just won every division and they continued to win and continued to win and I was like 'wow - this is amazing'.
"It's wonderful to see Pasifika children doing really well in chess, which isn't traditionally something that a lot of kids from the Pasifika play [at the highest level]."