NZ Warriors rookie Maarire Puketaphu choses league career over softball
Photo:
Mark Kolbe/www.photosport.nz
Maarire Puketapu can probably thank the Covid pandemic for diverting her sporting career towards the NZ Warriors NRLW programme.
As a teenager, she represented New Zealand as a softball centrefielder and even had a US college scholarship lined up at Division II Florida Tech.
"I played softball my entire life and was supposed to head over to America on a two-year scholarship, but unfortunately, because of Covid, I wasn't too keen on heading over there.
"I didn't think softball was going to be the sport for me."
Ironically, the very phenomenon that forced the Warriors women's team into a five-year hiatus was also the thing that steered Puketapu down that sporting pathway.
In 2021, while visiting relatives in Queensland, she played a game for the local Kawana Dolphins, whose coach invited her to move back for the entire season.
The following year, she chalked up air miles back and forth across the Tasman, sharing time between her Te Aroha Eels club and Wellington reps, and Kawana in Queensland.
Last year, Puketapu secured a fulltime spot at Sunshine Coast Falcons in the second-tier Queensland BMD Premiership, where she popped up on the radar of new Warriors coach Ron Griffiths.
"After some time, I got the big phone call and I was in shock," she said. "I hung up and screamed, 'F**k, I'm going to be a Warrior!', but I was at work, so I had to tone it down real quick."
While the nuggety second-rower began this season with zero NRLW experience, her efforts at the next level down at least put her ahead of those arriving from local clubs or other codes.
"Coming from BMD, I was only in that competition for one year, so I only got a small taste of how the competition can be," Puketapu said. "Taking that next step up to NRLW was pretty massive.
"I knew it was going to be hard, so before I came here, I just trained as hard as I could to the standard I thought would be similar to NRLW. I was training with our local boys team in Australia, hoping to up my skills and fitness.
"Obviously, I still died in pre-season, because that's what it's all about, but if I hadn't had that training prior, I wouldn't have been as good or I would have had injuries."
During her stay with the Warriors, she has been housed with sevens superstar Michaela Brake and former Black Fern Shakira Baker, who are both still feeling their way into rugby league and admit to picking their flatmate's brain.
That education cuts both ways.
"Honestly, it's been a big learning curve for me and I've added so much to my basket since being here," Puketapu said.
"I'm learning so much from our Black Fern girls and grateful to be living with two of them, so every day, I'm learning and growing as a player and a person."
"The biggest thing I've learnt is coming across the professional girls and seeing them on TV all my life... we're all on the same level. They didn't give off this energy that they're too cool or too good for us - you really do feel like you're part of the whānau here."
Puketapu doesn't lack for whānau of her own, many of whom made the trip across the ditch to witness her NRLW debut against Sydney Roosters.
"Running out of the tunnel and seeing my family there is a feeling you can't really describe."
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero
,
a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RNZ News
20 hours ago
- RNZ News
Trangender inclusive sports guidelines had positive impact for community
Rugby NZ says the guidelines had been valuable to the organisation. Photo: ©creativenature / 123RF The removal of guidelines for the inclusion of transgender people in community sport will further alienate people from participating, a member of a health advocacy group says. Rugby NZ says it's been using the advice and found it very helpful and valuable. The government has ordered Sport New Zealand to scrap its work on guidelines for the inclusion of transgender people in community sport. It has also removed the document from its website. First published in 2022, the guidelines do not dictate what individual organisations can decide about participation but they have been available on Sport NZ's website, providing advice based on health research and testimony from those with lived experience. Last year then-minister for sport Chris Bishop asked Sport NZ to review the guidelines for "safety and fairness" and update the principles. The current Minister for Sport and Recreation Mark Mitchell said the government has decided to leave decision making to individual sporting codes and there was nothing wrong with the content in the guidelines. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said it was about consistency and safety. Member of the Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa, student nurse and football player, Avery Zavoda, told Checkpoint she was incredibly disappointed to hear the guidelines were being scrapped altogether. "I feel like the previous advice from Sport NZ was robust and it helped smaller sport clubs and organisations with their inclusion policies as well as also providing guidelines around bullying, discrimination and harassment. I was really sad to see that all of those had been removed now," Zavoda said. Sports Minister Mark Mitchell. Photo: RNZ / Mark Papalii The "overarching principle" of the document was inclusion. "Every New Zealander has the right to participate in sport and to be treated with respect, empathy and positive regard. Transgender people can take part in sports in the gender they identify with," the document said. The guiding principles were based around: The principles were not mandatory and were not rules or criteria, as Sport NZ noted it would not be possible to provide a one-size-fits-all approach across every code. Despite not being mandatory, Zavoda said the guidelines were beneficial to small clubs who may not have the resources to do their own research into best practice guidelines. "It's taking away a tool that community sport organisations can use to know that they are doing the right thing by their community." Zavoda said she struggled to find a social football team and organisation running the tournaments that would be respectful. "I know many other people have struggled as well. Even though there... was guidance from Sport NZ about our inclusion. "I certainly feel that those guidelines had an impact, I felt like there was more that could be done, taking steps forward rather than now taking steps back and I know that this decision will lead to the feelings of many trans and non-binary people to further feel alienated from being able to play sport - a critical key in health." National's coalition with New Zealand First contains a commitment to "ensure publicly funded sporting bodies support fair competition that is not compromised by rules relating to gender". Asked about NZ First saying scrapping the guidelines aligns with the party standing up for "safety and fairness" in sport Zavoda said: "This is not elite sport, it's not about an advantage, you're playing casual community sport, like the kind that you or I should be able to go to, and in that community sport you have a diverse range of physiques, builds and that's across both trans and cisgender people." RNZ also spoke to Lenny, who said the point of community sport is to have fun and the removal of the guidelines just excludes people. "I know it's a divisive thing, transgender people in sport, but all we want to do is be the people that we want to be and be allowed to do that." Lenny said the experience of playing sport as a child was unpleasant. "Going on a sports field, feeling completely overwhelmed and isolated around all these screaming boys just being boys and...I would just stand around on the field not knowing what to do and trying to avoid everybody, so it's not a fun experience." Waikato University's Holly Thorpe, who helped draft the guidelines, said they were written because sports clubs wanted some help. "Sport NZ and our community sports clubs and organisations all want inclusion, they want everybody in New Zealand society to have access to supportive, inclusive, safe environments to participate. "This decision today is not a step towards that." Labour's rainbow issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert has labelled the decision a step backwards and said "this government keeps on kicking people down", and the Human Rights Commission has called this a "sad day". Green Party spokesperson for Takatāpui and Rainbow communities Benjamin Doyle said the directive showed the coalition had once again failed rainbow communities. NZ Rugby says it had been using the advice and found it very helpful and valuable. NZ Rugby's head of participation for community rugby, Mike Hester, told Checkpoint moving forward, the organisation will be guided by values and also by the voices of its participants. "They provided quite a lot of useful advice around how to understand the issue, how to... improve the awareness of some of the challenges that go in the space, so some of that advice was really useful and I think others in the sector have found it useful to help guide their thinking in this space." The guidelines had confirmed a lot of the issues NZ Rugby needed to think about as it moved forward with a community position. Asked if it was important people could play on a team that aligns with their gender, Hester said a key part of community sport was being able to access it and participate in a way that was important to each individual. "We would always feel inclusion is a really important value in rugby, it's a game for all shapes and sizes, everybody's welcome" he said. Ensuring safe participation was also something Rugby NZ would need to think about moving forward, he said. Hester was asked if Sports NZ saw allowing people to play with a team that aligns with their gender as inclusion over fairness, as suggested by NZ First leader Winston Peters. "When we spoke to our communities about this matter over the last couple of years, the themes that came through, particularly from participants in the women's category... what was really prominent was inclusion and safety," Hester said. "Fairness was less prominent for them because in the community space it's actually about other motivations to participate."
RNZ News
21 hours ago
- RNZ News
NZ Rugby reacts to govt directive
sport politics 24 minutes ago The Government has ordered Sport New Zealand to scrap its work on guidelines about the inclusion of transgender people in community sport. New Zealand Rugby said it had been using advice from Sport New Zealand on transgender inclusion in community sport, and found them very helpful and valuable. Mike Hester, New Zealand Rugby's Head of Participation Community Rugby said moving forward, the organisation will be guided by values and also by its participants. He spoke to Melissa Chan-Green.
RNZ News
21 hours ago
- RNZ News
Sport NZ scraps guidelines for inclusion of transgender people
sport politics 13 minutes ago Under government direction, Sport New Zealand has scrapped guidelines for the inclusion of transgender people in community sport. The removal comes after a review showing the principles did not reflect legitimate community expectations that sport should prioritise fairness and safety. New Zealand First is claming full credit for the change as its coalition partners struggled to explain why the change was needed. Russell Palmer reports.
