College Sport: AGGS salutes 100 years of captains

Ofa Hakeai is Auckland Girls Grammar School sports captain and sportswoman of the year.

Auckland Girls' Grammar are marking 100 years of their sports captains.

Since 1915, the games captains have been voted in by their peers. Today they play a key role running a number of AGGS sports events - swimming sports, athletics day, cross country, presenters at the annual sports awards dinner, and running lunchtime sport throughout the year - and do it on top of their own academic and sporting commitments.

"It's quite cool," said AGGS director of sport Christo Peters. "The thing I like about the sports prefects is that they are chosen because they are doers. They are chosen because they can lead a committee. Some of them have gone on to be lawyers, principals of other schools, teachers and artists. It's enabling them to have the skills to go and do well in schools."

The two AGGS sports prefects for 2015 are Mikayla McNabb, the school's swimming champion, and Ofa Hakeai, AGGS senior sportswoman of the year.

Hakeai is fresh off two more field events medals at the schools athletics nationals last weekend, giving her 10 national medals in her five years at school.

Profiled in 2014 in these College Sport pages, she is a good student and widely respected and recognised at AGGS, a long way from the humble, shy teenager who turned up in Peters' office in 2011 with another student to ask about athletics. Hakeai says the year was fun.

"We were told about [the centenary of sports captains] and like how they were only head girls as games captains. We were buzzing out," she said.

The roll call of sports captains dating back to Eva Oliver in 1915 is impressive, with many going on to represent New Zealand in various sports or becoming captains of industry.

Ida Johns in 1939 played for the national cricket team while still at school, and Liz Ah Kuoi, sister of former Kiwis league representative Fred Ah Kuoi, was the 1981 sports captain. The following year she was head girl and dux before going on to play netball for Auckland.

In 1948, the AGGS sports captain was Elaine Becroft (now Stephan), who immersed herself in hockey, netball, cricket and her best sport, tennis. She went on to win multiple tennis national titles and also played at Wimbledon. Stephan recalls with fondness her time as sports captain, which marked AGGS' 60th jubilee. The prizegiving was held in the Town Hall, a big thing at the time.

"We used to have to supervise equipment at lunch hour, among other things,"she said. "We were normally captains of netball, hockey, tennis or cricket teams. The sports captain was widely recognised, as they are today.

"Everyone knew everyone at that stage."