She quickly found she liked the sport and had an aptitude for it - something she thanks her brothers for.
"I grew up with three brothers and they didn't mind a bit of rough and tumble and neither did I," she said.
"I'm probably more into that kind of stuff than any other girls I know."
Miss Howse trains up to three hours a day after a 5am wake-up call.
Her training sessions are spread between the university and two kickboxing gyms in Cambridge and Te Awamutu.
She's already had some success in the touch-contact points scoring version of the sport, with victories at the Waitomo Fight series last year where she fought a national taekwondo champion after just a few months of training and won the champion of champions title.
"It's a lot faster than full-contact so it's not too hard hitting ... you can still get hurt though, I got punched pretty hard in the throat once."
Miss Howse is paying her own way to travel to Telford, England in August to compete in the World Organisation of Martial Arts Associations where she is likely to compete in the 55kg to 60kg category.
She said the mental side of kickboxing could be a challenge.
"Turning around when you're about to fight a woman who is as tall and as solid as a giant man is pretty off-putting, so I focus on staying calm and fighting how I've been trained to do."
Having the support of different people for my training and studies makes my start at university so much smoother. It also means I can get to the world championships in August, which I otherwise would have struggled to do," says Howse.
Her BMS degree will take four years.
"I want to eventually have a career in some kind of corporate sports marketing," she said.
"Sport is something that brings everyone together so I want my career to promote and foster that."
