Ruth Opai is a role model for all women who want to take up sport - realising her passion for roller hockey in her 40s, and making the NZ team as goalie. She tells Angela Walker what drove her to put herself in the firing line.
“I want to make a pathway for women who think they can’t,” Ruth Opai says.
The 48-year-old, who's been named as goalie in the New Zealand roller hockey team, says she’s proof neither age nor motherhood is a barrier.
“If someone has a family and a job and thinks they can’t pursue their passions and interests – so wrong. I want to blow that out of the water. I am a little example you can realise your passion at 48,” she says.
As one of an 11-strong New Zealand women’s team, Opai was selected for the World Roller Games in Argentina in October – after only five years on skates.
And she wasn’t the only member of her family selected - husband Steve Opai is the New Zealand men’s team goalie.
Seeing him head to Spain three years ago to compete at the last World Roller Games got the Taranaki mother-of-two thinking.
“When he left for Barcelona, I thought, ‘He can't just be the one who gets to pursue his dreams while I stay home and squash a sense of enjoyment and passion. I don't want to just sit on the sidelines’,” she says.
Sitting on the sidelines was something Opai had witnessed her late mother struggle with.
“My mum was sporty and would have pursued sport had she been able to, but her generation typically just gave up everything and became housewives,” Opai says. “I could see her pain. I saw her question herself and start to unravel a bit.
“I could see a person who had much more to offer, and I thought, ‘In my life I don’t want to leave anything unturned’.”
So when the New Zealand men’s coach saw Ruth Opai play two years ago and told her, ‘If you keep this up, you could make New Zealand women’s goalie’, a seed was sown.
Remarkably, it was the first time she’d played in goal. She stepped into the role for her team, the ‘Taranaki Ladies’, when they suddenly needed a goalkeeper at a tournament in Hastings. Afterwards she had a memorable conversation with her husband.
“We sat on the couch and looked at each other,” she remembers. “He’d been getting message after message from all the people who’d watched me play, and they were giving compliments. And we just turned to each and said: ‘Is it possible? Could we?’”
Two years on, their dream of going to the World Roller Games together was about to be realised. However the women’s team have now made the difficult decision to call the trip off.
The current economic situation and civil unrest in Argentina has made it unsafe, explains team manager, Jenny Parker.
“We received an official letter from the organisers saying they’re not 100 percent sure they could guarantee the safety of everybody, or that there will be enough accommodation available with people on strike, protesting against the inflation rates,” Parker says.
So a disappointed Opai will once again remain at home while her husband heads overseas (the men’s team are still planning to compete in Argentina).
She's still convinced her turn will come, and now has her sights firmly set on the following World Roller Games, in two years time.
“Ruth will get her turn in the sun,” Parker says. “She's still part of our New Zealand team. She's an absolute golden star. With her level of integrity, and exemplary skills on and off the rink, we can’t wait to take her overseas.”
Opai chooses to approach setbacks and challenges in life by seeking creative solutions. It’s something she does on a daily basis.
“As a mother, juggling everything is a massive challenge – trying to find creative ways of making it all happen, but it is possible,” she says.
Opai cites her part-time cleaning job at the New Plymouth Roller Sports Club as an example of “juggling creatively”. In fact, she uses it as goalie training.
“Instead of just wiping the walls of the rink, I wipe them in the motion I use as a goalie. Vacuuming, I use both arms to get both sides balanced. And I mop with a sweep around so I get my hip rotators exercised and strong,” she says.
In addition to her rink-cleaning role, she works as a relief teacher at Welbourn School, and as a pole fitness instructor at Pole FX studio.
Opai’s varied schedule includes a morning workout beside her kids – Aurelia, 11 and Jasper, eight – while they eat breakfast.
“I do an easier workout so I can talk to them. Plus I want to show them the mental thought process – we can, we will, and why not,” she says.
Opai has long been known for her can-do attitude. According to her parents, she always gave 100 percent to everything as a child, spurred on by three older brothers. Keen to experience as much as possible, she did rowing, badminton, gymnastics and hockey.
In her twenties, she competed in snowboarding until a “massive accident” put paid to her plans to take the sport further.
After that, Opai says she “did life for a bit”, getting married and having children. But once her kids had started school, she decided it was time to “regroup”.
“I was in that washed-up zone. I’d been through the wringer. I was sick of my body shape. So I gave myself a year, and got into fitness and lost some weight,” Opai says.
“Someone told me: ‘When you make a big decision, never make it from a place of weakness. Make your biggest decisions in life from a place of strength’. I got my body and health back in shape, and was stronger than ever. The old me, always ready for an opportunity, came back.”
So when opportunity knocked five years ago, Opai was ready. Her daughter had just taken up roller hockey at the local skating rink, and instead of watching from the sidelines, Opai donned skates for the first time ever, and gave skating a try.
Almost straightaway, she was asked if she’d help make up numbers in a roller hockey team at an upcoming tournament. Undeterred by her lack of skating experience, Opai threw herself into the challenge and soon became a regular member of the team.
However her tendency to not see limits became somewhat of a liability.
“I was skating as if I was five, in a 43-year-old body, thinking, ‘I can do this’,” Opai smiles. “Then I broke my wrist, broke my fingers, injured my knuckles, and damaged my head on a pylon. So I toned it down a bit, but I was not taking the skates off and giving up.”
Roller hockey, a demonstration sport at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, has four players and one goalkeeper on the rink at any one time. Becoming goalkeeper, Opai says, was ideal for her because she is clad in 10kgs of protective kit.
As well as appreciating the extra padding, Opai is looking forward to wearing the silver fern at the Trans-Tasman championships next year.
“The fern says it all. It says you’re stretching for something that seems out of the ordinary. You become part of a club of people who all think the same way,” she says.
Even more important to Opai is the future of women’s roller hockey. It’s been 30 years since the first-ever Kiwi women’s team competed at a world event – New Zealand claiming bronze at the 1992 women’s roller hockey World Cup.
“We want to set up a pathway for the ones coming through, to build female representation in the sport,” Opai says.
As well as paving the way for the next generation of roller hockey players, Ruth Opai hopes her story will inspire others to pursue their passion.
“I want people who feel there's more for them in life to go and achieve something that gives them that ‘wow’ factor.”
