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Two students from Mahurangi College will be heading to Malaysia next month to compete for New Zealand in the 6th Underwater Hockey Age Group World Championships.
Charlie Blampied, from Matakana, and Warkworth’s Thea Buick will be two of the youngest players in the Under 19 women’s team, aged 16 and 15 respectively.
Joining them in the NZ squad are four other ex-Mahu players – Thea’s sister Mackenzie Buick and Charlotte O’Connor in the Under 24 women’s team, Izaak Lees in Under 19 men’s and Sam Thwigg for Under 24 men’s.
All the players have been through an gruelling training and selection process over the past 18 months, with the final squads only announced last month.
Now the race is on to raise the $8000 per player needed to get them on the team plane to Kuala Lumpur in mid-July.
Although a relatively obscure sport, underwater hockey has long been popular at Mahurangi College and its students punch well above their weight on the national and international stage. Most recently, the school took out the 2023 national championships in both the junior and senior girls team event in Wellington.
Blampied and Buick followed that with their first taste of international success, winning against Australia during a trans-Tasman tournament in September.
Blampied says, while that was good experience, the prospect of the world champs in Malaysia is on a whole other level.
“I’m just so excited, I can’t wait,” she says. “Thea and I are just wanting to organise something to raise funds now.”
There are also training camps and many sessions in the pool and gym, not to mention school work, to fit in before the championships take place from July 16 to 27.
While Thea, Mackenzie and third sister Rowan Buick all come from a solid underwater hockey household – even Mum Amy Oberkircher is a renowned player – Blampied is a relative newcomer to the sport.
She only started because she went to watch a friend practice playing after a sleepover.
“Somehow I wound up getting in the pool, started playing and I fell in love with it. That was the end of Year 9,” she says. “It’s just so random and such fun.”
The four NZ teams will be up against players from 11 other countries, starting with five ‘round robin’ days, where all teams play each other at least twice, followed by quarter finals and playoffs, semi-finals and playoffs, and the final.
Doubtless the local contingent will be feeling a little pressure to perform well – the last age group World
Champs were held in the UK in 2019, where NZ won three of the four titles and came third in the Under 24 men’s.
Anyone who would like to contribute to the Mahu girls’ fundraising efforts can email Katherine Norman at katherine@resourceplanninginc.com
Hockey history
Underwater hockey was invented in 1954 in England and was initially called Octopush, since it involved two teams of eight divers pushing a puck around the bottom of a swimming pool with a short stick to score goals. Players wear a mask, snorkel, fins and a swim hat with ear guards. Underwater hockey has been played in NZ since 1964 and is now played globally by at least 30 countries. There are hopes it might become an Olympic sport before too long – it debuted at the Southeast Asia mini-Olympics in 2019.
