Good sports: Latu survived tearful year to thrive on court

Kawakawa's Cathrine Latu. Photo/File

Mystics and Silver Fern shooter Cathrine Latu left her family in Northland at the age of 14 to follow her netball passion. This season, she's having a great run in the ANZ Championship, shooting 100 per cent in her last two games. She's also lost 15kg, but says it isn't because people called her fat.

Your mum once said you had "middle child syndrome", what did she mean by that?

I think she's just trying to find an explanation for the way that I am. In our family, I'm sixth from the top but the two above me are boys, and above them are two girls and I wanted to be the girls' friend more than anything but I was so much younger they didn't want a bar of it. So I had to choose to be the slave for my brothers or the boss of my three little sisters and brother. Yeah, I chose to be the boss.

What was it like moving to Auckland?

I got a scholarship to Massey High School and was playing for Waitakere under-17s. I lived with the president of the club and her husband in West Harbour. It was beautiful but I didn't care about that. The silence in the house made me crazy. I'd never had to make friends before. There were 3000 students at the school and I didn't know how to speak to people because I was not an average-sized human. I stood out a lot (at 1.85m). I just cried for a year really. Missed home. To be honest, I don't even know now how I got through it.

You recently lost 15kg - was that in reaction to those on social media who described you as fat?

I didn't do it because heaps of people called me fat. I did it because I wanted to play better for longer. I had to get fitter. [Silver Fern coach] Wai [Taumanu] always said to me "you need to be smaller". She never sugar-coated it. She said: "I want you to move faster and I need you to move for longer." I can feel it because I'm making better decisions in the latter parts of the game now. And I've changed my game so I'm making more attempts at goal.

You were critical of radio host Rachel Smalley's "heifers" and "lardos" comments. Are you sensitive about weight issues?

Not for me. I don't care what people say about me. But I think women are programmed to need to be accepted from the time we're little. We want to be seen as perfect and social media and media in general has let us know what that perfect image is. I'd rather be told [I'm fat] a million times than someone say it to a child. I think we're teaching our kids to be mean.