The national ultimate frisbee team, Mangōpare, is gearing up to compete in the WFDF 2023 Mixed Under 24 Championships in Nottingham, England.
The team is captained by a former Ngātai Ātea student Maringi Hogan, who only started playing when she was 16 and has already become one of the best players in the country at her position.
“She’s an agile player, she has excellent disc skills, and she’s small so that means she can throw underneath and around people,” coach Liam Haberfield says.
Hogan comes from a netball, waka ama and kiorahi background, and says those skills translate well to ultimate frisbee.
“The position I play is handling, because I have decent throwing skills and can throw quite far," she says.
Relatively new sport
Ultimate frisbee began in the 1960s and quickly gained traction among college students in the United States. Initially just known as "ultimate," the sport is played with a flying disc, following a set of well-defined rules that emphasise fair play, sportsmanship, and self-refereeing.
Two teams compete with the objective of advancing the disc into the opposing team's end zone to score points.
Mangōpare has placed between eighth and 12th in its most recent world championships, and this year the team is hoping to keep up with powerhouses of the sport, including Canada, Japan and the US.
The competition kicks off in the UK on July 2.
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