Nina Murphy, a 19-year-old hockey player, chose to study medicine in Dunedin, abandoning plans in Brisbane. Photo / Newsroom
By Suzanne McFadden of LockerRoom
Early in the new year, Nina Murphy made a snap decision that would change the course of her life – in more ways than one.
The teenager had a sudden change of heart, ditching her plans to go to university in Brisbane and choosing to cross the Tasman to Dunedin to pursue her dream to study medicine.
Within six months, the promising hockey player – who had been training in an Australian future squad with an eye to the 2032 Brisbane Olympics – shocked even herself by landing in the Black Sticks.
Although the 19-year-old was born and raised on Australia’s east coast, her allegiance has always been clear. With two Kiwi parents, Murphy was a self-declared New Zealander from the start, so pulling on the black dress to play the United States in North Carolina this week won’t feel strange.
“As a little kid – and I was quite a cocky little kid – I’d always tell people ‘I want to play for the Black Sticks’,” she says.
“I think it may have been out of spite. I was the only daughter [of four] born in Australia and maybe I wanted to show them I was actually the true New Zealander. If we went to an All Blacks-Wallabies game, I’d always go for the All Blacks.
“There’s a photo of me at the 2022 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast, when the Kookaburras were playing the Black Sticks men in the final – I was head-to-toe in black and white. Whenever I come to New Zealand, I always feel so at home.
“So you can see I’m super stoked to be playing for New Zealand – and I don’t think it’s going to be weird at all.”
Murphy, an attacking midfielder, is the only debutant in the Black Sticks (ranked No 10 in the world), who’ll play five matches against the world No 14-ranked Americans at the start of their road to next year’s World Cup.
She caught the eye of Black Sticks coach Phil Burrows with her standout performance at the Junior Hockey League in Auckland in April, playing for the Alpiners and named MVP of the Under-21 tournament.
She was sitting her exams in her health sciences first-year course when she got the call from Burrows. “He said, ‘You’re coming to the USA’,” she recalls. “I was focusing on so many things at once, it was crazy.
“The main thing he wanted to stress to me is that I deserve to be there. He probably thought I’d be like, ‘This is a bit sudden, do I deserve to be here? Is this a rushed decision?’ But he definitely made me feel like he was picking me on my talent, after seeing me play in the Junior Hockey League.”
And Burrows has made it clear Murphy won’t be just warming the bench in Charlotte over the next 12 days. “Nina brings explosive speed, sharp technical skill, and a fearless attacking mindset – she’s set to make a serious impact in her debut,” he says.
Those talents had already put her on the radar for future international honours in Australia. It’s just that the Black Sticks beat them to it.
Murphy started playing hockey at the age of 6 at the Casuarina club on the north coast of New South Wales. She and some schoolmates at Lindisfarne Anglican Grammar School were trying to figure out what sport to play.
“One mum suggested we should get into netball, then another mum said, ‘Nah, let’s do hockey’,” Murphy says.
“It was a bit of a hockey school, although the sport wasn’t really that popular where we lived. In senior school, I was one of the only kids in my grade who played hockey. A lot of the girls in our school team didn’t want to play sport, but they just had to choose one.
“I played other sports – a bit of rugby, football and touch. But hockey always seemed to work a little better for me.”
After her family moved to the Gold Coast, Murphy played her way right through the Queensland age groups – as well as indoor hockey.
Last year, she was selected by former Black Sticks coach Mark Hager for Australia’s National Future Squad, looking for the next generation of Hockeyroos for the 2032 Brisbane Olympics.
“It was awesome to get that acknowledgement. It meant training with the Queensland Academy of Sport up in Brisbane, which was so good for my hockey,” Murphy says. “But it was an hour-and-a-half drive to Brisbane four days a week, sometimes after school.
“So when I got to New Zealand, the hockey here just got me excited for it all over again. The change has been good.
“Everything else was so new to me – going to uni, living in a hall, in a different country. But the one thing that was constant was hockey, and I could rely on it and just enjoy it.”
Murphy is proud of her Māori whakapapa – her iwi is Te Aitanga ā Māhaki, her is hapū Te Whānau a Taupara. In 2023, she played in the New Zealand Māori hockey tournament for Tairāwhiti Wāhine Hinehakirirangi.
“That tournament really helped me become more immersed [in Māoritanga]. I was worried I’d feel like an outsider, but it was such a great experience. I’ll definitely play it again this year.”
It was during a visit to whānau and her marae, Takipu, inland from Gisborne, last summer that she decided to move to New Zealand.
She had planned to go to Brisbane to study physiotherapy or radiography and play hockey this year. “I had it all sorted, with a place to live with a few of my schoolmates,” she says.
“But when I came over here, family were asking what my plan was, and I realised I wasn’t that passionate about it. On the last day of an amazing holiday, my cousin’s boyfriend was talking about his awesome experience studying medicine at Otago. I hadn’t thought about that option, but suddenly – in a 20-second period – my whole life changed.
“It was like a huge door opened for me. I didn’t get much sleep that night, I was applying for Health Sci and starting my application for halls in Dunedin.”
It made sense for Murphy – whose parents, Reta and Paul Murphy (“childhood sweethearts”), both studied at Otago. “They loved the Dunedin lifestyle, so that helped reassure me,” Murphy says.
“I’ve heard some crazy stories about how competitive health science at Otago is, people burn each other’s notes or set alarms in people’s buildings so they wake up the night before an exam. I’m very grateful I’ve had no experiences like that.”
She hopes to study medicine next year.
Murphy is playing club hockey for the Kings United club in Dunedin and says the experience has been different. “I can’t put a word on why it’s different, but it just is – and not in a bad way. The people are all really friendly here,” she says. “When I went to play in the Junior Hockey League and I knew no one, I didn’t feel like a stranger.”
Murphy is likely to play for another New Zealand team this year, selected in the squad working towards the Junior World Cup in Chile in December. “It’s always been a goal of mine to play at the Junior World Cup, so hopefully I’ll be lucky enough to go,” she says.
Has she allowed herself to look ahead to next year’s World Cup, or future Olympics?
“This is all just so new for me, I feel like I want to own my place first,” she says. “I really want to play the best I can to make sure Phil knows he made the right choice, before I think about the Olympics. My goal was to make the Junior World Cup ... so maybe my goals might need a little adjusting.”
This story was originally published at Newsroom.co.nz and is republished with permission.