Following a knee ligament injury, she focused on work.
Te Uarangi is a teacher aide at Feilding Intermediate School.
She and Black Fern Kaipo are based in Palmerston North and have played rugby together for the Poverty Bay under-18s and women’s teams, as well as Linton Army.
This year Kaipo, Te Uarangi and halfback Paige Lush — in an effort to provide opportunities for youngsters to play rugby — founded and recruited players for the Freyberg Old Boys club’s first women’s team.
Te Uarangi captained the side in the regular season while Kaipo was skipper in the competition semifinals.
Kaipo, Te Uarangi and Paige play for the Manawatū Cyclones.
Hooker Te Uarangi and No.8 Kaipo have seven and 19 caps respectively.
The three Olsen-Baker sisters attended Awapuni School and Gisborne Intermediate School, and were members of Gisborne Gymnastics Club from 2005 to
2011.
They played football, netball, basketball, ki-o-rahi, touch and rugby.
The trio inherited their great passion for sport from their parents, former Pirates and Horouta rugby man Jason Baker and netballer Gabe, who played at goal-shoot and goal-attack for several Gisborne and East Coast club sides and representative teams
Gabe was tennis champion at Ngata Memorial College in Ruatōria in 1989. Te Uarangi went to Lytton High School and Gisborne Girls’ High School, Kaipo to Gisborne Girls’ High, and Te Mai Ora to Lytton, Hamilton Girls’ High School and finally Gisborne Girls’ High.
Te Mai Ora played rugby on the wing and at halfback, attended the Central National Talent Development Camp for Basketball New Zealand at Palmerston North in 2015 and — while at Lytton — was the Gisborne Basketball Association’s Most Valuable Player of the women’s league that year.
She went to Hamilton in Year 11 with her sporting focus on sevens.
In her first year there, Hamilton Girls’ High won the Condor 7s and contested the SANIX World Cup in Japan.
In her second year, her sevens team were national runners-up to St Mary’s College of Wellington.
She spent two terms at Gisborne Girls’ High before tearing her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) before the Royal New Zealand Air Force intake.
Since that time her focus has been work. Te Mai Ora is a banking consultant for Westpac on the Gold Coast.
“Sport was our life growing up,” she said. “We were competitive, though also very supportive of each other.
“We’ve made lifelong friends through different sports. I believe we owe thanks to the various sports we played growing up, for the confidence and coordination that we have to this day.”
Kaipo, who was a student at Gisborne Girls’ and Manukura School in Palmerston North, said: “Growing up, I played a range of sports but when I moved to Palmerston North, to go to Manukura in Year 12, I really wanted to pursue rugby as my number one sport.”
She made the Black Ferns in 2022 and played her first test (against Australia) in June that year.
“Being able to travel overseas to play sport, to see places that I didn’t think I ever would, has been amazing,” she said.
“To debut for the Black Ferns was also a dream of mine since I was little — as was watching my sister, Te Uarangi, run out on the field with me in the green and white jersey (of Manawatū).”
