When Violette Perry arrived at the pool for her first match with Yale University’s water polo team, her opponents didn’t recognise her as a competitor. Some assumed she was a physiotherapist, others thought she was a teammate’s girlfriend.
And when the Kiwi student scored her first goal, she was challenged in the water by her opponents, who asked whether her shot was a mistake.
That’s because the New Zealander was the only woman competing in an all-male league.
“It was definitely daunting, being a woman on a team of 25 American men. They’re very loud and very passionate and I’m not like that.”
Yet, in doing so, Perry (Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa) made history.
“The Yale men’s water polo team has been around officially in the system since 1964, and through that whole time, I’ve been the first woman to ever play on that team. So it’s very much an honour for me.”
The Kiwi athlete, now 22, returned to Auckland last month after graduating, taking time to reflect on her experience as a student athlete at the prestigious Ivy League school in Connecticut.
Recruited for her exceptional academic and athletic abilities, Perry spent four years at Yale balancing the intense demands of elite sport and rigorous study.
Yet the path to an Ivy League education was anything but straightforward.
Born and raised in Bangkok until the age of 7, her Kiwi parents quickly learned of her natural sporting ability.
“It’s normal [in Bangkok] to be really good at one sport and do that really hardcore. I was quite good at swimming, and I was quite tall over there for a child.”
Perry’s family moved back to her mother’s hometown of Christchurch not long before the 2010 earthquakes. But the damaged sports facilities in the South Island city affected Perry’s desire to grow as an athlete.
She moved to Auckland, boarding at St Cuthbert’s College for her last two years of high school, where she focused on water polo and athletics, specialising in javelin, discus and shot put. She also excelled in science, finishing top of her class in chemistry.
It was at St Cuthbert’s where Perry explored the option of college in the United States before she was recruited to Yale to study a Bachelor of Economics.
She told the Herald she had never considered a scholarship to America until colleges began contacting her in Year 12. Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Brown, University of Pennsylvania and Cornell all offered Perry places in their programmes, which made the possibility a reality.
She said the balance of school and sport was what attracted her to Yale.
“I can confidently say that going to Yale was by far the best decision I’ve ever made in my life.
“I’ve been quite frustrated by the whole connotation around student athletes – that you can’t succeed in both academics and athletics. At Yale, all the students really defy that and everyone is brilliant both academically and athletically. That’s something that I really love about school.”
Perry became the first (along with her sister) in three generations of her whānau to attend university – let alone at an Ivy League school – marking a significant milestone for her family.
“My Māori grandmother never had the opportunity to go to school at all, neither my dad or any of his eight siblings finished high school or went to university.
“It was crazy because you don’t hear about people going to these schools, and then, let alone two generations passed.
“That, I was very proud of.”
Two years into her time at Yale, Perry shifted her focus entirely to water polo after a shoulder injury ended her track and field career.
By the end of her sophomore year, she caught the attention of the men’s team coach. He saw potential in her abilities, knowing she could add value to the men’s side.
“The women’s team had a practice one weekend, and the men’s coach was there early for the men’s practice. Then he saw me training and he asked if I wanted to come join the men’s practice afterwards.
“I ended up just training with them at all of their practices and then we were able to get dispensation for me to play.”
Playing in the New England Division of the Collegiate Water Polo Association, she described it as a “crazy and unique experience”.
Perry told the Herald that playing in the men’s competition amplified the physical aspects of the already notoriously brutal sport.
She said the men’s game relied more on “brute strength” as there was “significantly more body contact and physical battling for position”.
Despite being the outlier, having to get ready for games in different changing rooms and having different physical abilities and strengths, her coach and teammates treated her with the same respect as anyone else, she said.
“My teammates were so kind, they’re like my family.”
Perry said that when it came to academia, she felt the cut-throat nature of an Ivy League school.
“It is very competitive, especially grades-wise.
“Everyone is their high-school valedictorian and it’s a bunch of A-plus personality people in one classroom.”
However, she said she never felt she had to choose between sport and study, given the school’s academic support system.
She would take early morning classes at Yale, leaving the afternoons and evenings free for training. During track and field season, she trained from 4pm-7pm on weekdays with weekend competitions then for water polo had evening pool sessions from 8pm-10pm four times a week, “plus intensive Saturday sessions where I’d train back-to-back with both the men’s and women’s teams”.
With her first-hand experience playing competitive sport alongside men, Perry was supportive of moves to exclude transgender women’s exclusion in top-flight female sports.
“While I deeply respect transgender individuals and support their inclusion in society, competitive sport presents unique challenges,” Perry said.
“The biological advantages from testosterone development are significant enough that even the most elite female athletes may struggle to compete on equal terms.”
She said it isn’t about discrimination, more so about preserving the competitive integrity that separate categories were designed to ensure.
Perry told the Herald that her graduation couldn’t have been more meaningful, as Dame Jacinda Ardern, the former New Zealand Prime Minister, addressed Perry’s graduating class.
As both Ardern and Perry excelled in male-dominated fields, Ardern’s presence at the ceremony, where she talked of the power of humility that comes with impostor syndrome, added a thoughtful parallel to Perry’s journey.
“She’s incredible, and what I remember the most about meeting her is how deeply personable she was,” Perry told the Herald. “I think that very much speaks volumes to her as a leader.”
She was one of the 12 lucky New Zealanders from the graduating class who met Ardern ahead of her speech with the entire year group.
She said Ardern asked the Kiwis if they were “disappointed she was chosen as the guest speaker”, but she and her peers responded adamantly: “Obviously not.”
“My friends were all so excited.
“Despite how much she’s achieved on such a global scale, she managed to make everyone in that room, all 12 of us, feel very seen and heard – and I think that’s really beautiful.
“It definitely speaks to how she’s not just a leader in the sense of making very big decisions, but also how she interacts with people in the smallest moments.
“I think that’s very much a quality of a very strong leader.”
Perry said she learned through Ardern the importance of how to act around others.
“It’s not just how you are on the big stage. She was the same on that stage as she was with us in that tiny room, and I think that’s a really important way to be.
“Being New Zealanders, we are very renowned for our humility and also our sense of community – and you can feel that from her, and it made me realise that in myself.”
Now back in Tāmaki-Makaurau Auckland, Perry is reconnecting with family while competing in the national water polo league for the Sea Wolves, all while planning her next steps.
Aware of the limited financial opportunities in the sport in Aotearoa, she has decided to prioritise her career, with plans to move to Sydney later this year for a role in management consulting.
As she steps into the next phase of her life, Perry is advocating for greater adaptability in male-dominated spaces and sports teams.
She said her experience playing for the Yale men’s water polo team was a success, given the inclusive environment where she was fully recognised and supported.
“It’s definitely less about females moulding into a certain way to fit into a pre-existing men’s water polo league and more just them creating space for people like me to come in.
“The league that I played in did that very well and I definitely think if you’re a woman and you’re looking at going into a men’s league, don’t be intimidated by it.
“I got a lot better as a player, I got a lot stronger – and there are a lot of benefits that came out of that.”
Bonnie Jansen is a multimedia journalist in the NZME sports team. She was named New Zealand’s Best Up and Coming journalist in 2025. She’s a football commentator and co-host of the Football Fever podcast and was part of the Te Rito cadetship scheme before becoming a fulltime journalist.
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