National champ enjoys rapid rise

Northland's Hayley Cassidy believes winning a muay kickboxing world title is well within her reach.

Next month, the current New Zealand IKBF (international kickboxing federation) super lightweight champion will head to Macedonia to contest the World Association of Kickboxing Organisation World Championships and while she has no idea of what to expect from the competition, she has only one goal.

"I'm aiming to win. It will also be a good chance to figure out where my skill level is at and how I compare to others around the world. I'm not sure who I will be fighting and what they are like. The Thai girls will be good, and the Hungarian and German women will be strong," Cassidy said.

The 29-year-old nurse aid from Whangarei has put in the hard yards in recent months.

Winning the New Zealand title in May clinched her a spot in the WAKO Kiwi team to contest the 65kg-and-under Female K1 Light Division at the worlds.

Cassidy is the only female in the team.

"The sport is definitely growing among women - people do it more for fitness rather than competitive fighting though," she said.

Since her inclusion in the team, she has increased her training load, doing three sessions at Roundhouse Kickboxing Studio with trainers Simon Haenga and David Glassy, plus a one-on-one session with Glassy as well as strength and conditioning on other days.

For a long time, Cassidy said she wanted to start competitive kickboxing.

"But my low confidence level held me back. But then one day I saw a well-known kickboxer Shane 'Choppa' Chapman in a magazine and decided I wanted to get into it," she said.

Cassidy started training three years ago, and has only been fighting for just over a year, but she has won all of her five fights to dat and is hopeful of continuing her success rate at the world champs starting October 23.

Raising money for her trip has been a struggle and Cassidy is still looking for sponsors after funding a lot of the trip herself.

"It's still not really widely known - I'm still trying to find sponsorship and alot of people still ask what it is."