Sport runs in Wills, Preston families

RISING TO SPIKE: Kelsie Wills prepares to spike, as her partner Shaunna Polley crouches, in the Volleyball New Zealand National Beach Championships at Mt Maunganui. Their opponents were Bay of Plenty pairing Alice Bain and former Gisborne athlete Julia Tilley. Volleyball NZ/Julie Fitz-Gerald picture

NEW Zealand beach volleyball women’s team member Kelsie Wills has a strong Gisborne link.

Wills, 25 years old and 6ft 1in, is the granddaughter of former Gisborne residents Barry and Diana Preston.

Barry and his brothers Bob and Husky played rugby for Poverty Bay in the 1950s.

“Barry was a very good athlete and when he was at Gisborne High School he set a record for the hop, skip and jump that stood for over 40 years,” said Shaun Goldsbury, a grandson of Husky Preston and second cousin of Kelsie Wills.

It took another outstanding athlete and rugby player — James Kerr of the Blues, Crusaders and New Zealand Maori — to set a new mark in the 1990s.

“Barry Preston was a 6ft 3in centre, represented Poverty Bay when he was still a teenager and played against the 1956 Springboks,” Goldsbury said.

“He was in the New Zealand Colts with Wilson Whineray and Colin Meads, but suffered a career-ending knee injury at 22.”

In his working life, Barry Preston started out delivering bottled milk. He and Diana turned this enterprise into a wholesale distribution business. Now retired, they have been in Tauranga for six years.

Their daughter Karen attended Lytton High School and left Gisborne to attend teachers college. She married Grant Wills — like Karen, a multi-talented athlete — and they are dairy farmers in Walton near Matamata.

Karen and Grant’s daughter Kelsie was Matamata College Sportswoman of the Year in 2010. She excelled at netball, tennis, swimming, cross-country running and volleyball, representing New Zealand at under-17 and u19 levels in indoor and beach versions of the game.

Wills won a volleyball scholarship to Hofstra University, Long Island, New York, and obtained an accountancy degree during her four years there.

She then played professional indoor volleyball in France for a year. She came back to New Zealand two years ago and targeted a place in the Commonwealth Games beach volleyball team.

For the past 18 months, Wills and playing partner Shaunna Polley have travelled extensively in a campaign that culminated in their victory in the Volleyball New Zealand National Beach Championships at Mt Maunganui on January 7. This clinched their selection as the women’s beach volleyball pairing for the Games.

In the final, they beat Bay of Plenty pairing Alice Bain and former Gisborne athlete Julia Tilley, who has campaigned internationally for much of the past decade.

Bob and the late Husky Preston were principals of Awapuni School and Lytton High School respectively.

Shaun Goldsbury played national league football, then represented New Zealand in both indoor and beach volleyball. He is now wholesale manager of Genesis Energy and was a finalist in the 2017 Young Energy Professional of the Year award. He is a board member of Volleyball New Zealand.