KEY POINTS:
On the night before the biggest day of her life, Jaimee Provan received a text which rather flooded her wedding plans.
Bunkered down in Paihia in March with her immediate family and bridesmaids Niniwa Roberts and Lizzy Igasan, Provan learned the storms lashing Northland were likely to keep the region's roads closed for the next 24 hours.
That was potentially a big problem given that the groom, Northland rugby fitness trainer Johnny Claxton, was on the wrong side of the floodwaters - along with every other guest.
"The minister was stuck, Johnny was stuck, none of the guests could get through. I've got pictures of Johnny on the day of the wedding wading through waist-deep water in his undies trying to push his sister's car out of a flood," Provan says.
But the next day dawned brilliantly fine. Crisis averted.
That makes it two unwanted messages that had sunny endings.
In early 2006, Provan was in the Black Sticks camp, preparing for the Commonwealth Games in which they were expected to do well.
"I felt like I had been playing well, I'd been training hard, I was enjoying my hockey," she recalls.
Then bang, it was gone. She was told by then coach Ian Rutledge she wasn't wanted for the Games. More than 100 caps count for nothing when you are unwanted, especially when you never see it coming.
"It was absolutely devastating to find out I hadn't made the team," Provan says. "When you invest that much into something only to be told you're not going to get it, it's always a tough pill to swallow."
Provan moved north to Ruakaka and gave hockey a wide berth.
"I took seven months off: I didn't play, I didn't train, I didn't run. I did absolutely nothing. I just left it until it felt right to come back and play again. It's fair to say I was pretty angry for a while so it wouldn't have been a good thing for me to go and play any club hockey while I was that angry with the game."
It wasn't as if pursuit of the white ball was the only thing on her mind those days. Her father, Ron, had been battling brain cancer and respiratory problems for the past couple of years and things were looking touch and go in 2006.
"The Commonwealth Games camp was in Christchurch so I was quite grateful I got to spend eight weeks with Dad, living at home. That was the best thing to come out of it.
"It was a pretty tough year getting dropped then moving up north and having to deal with that at the same time. I was pretty emotional. When you're dealing with things like that you prioritise pretty quickly and after I got dropped I realised hockey wasn't a priority - Dad was.
"I got married six weeks ago and I was really blessed to have him walk me down the aisle which was something we weren't sure was going to happen. For me that was huge."
In the sport she used to love, huge things were happening off the field.
Rutledge, whose relationship with some of his senior players could best be described as fraught, left and was replaced by men's coach Kevin Towns. Provan, who admits she would never have played for Rutledge again, had returned to the field for North Harbour and suddenly a national recall didn't seem so hopeless.
"I never wanted to stop playing for New Zealand. If it was my choice I would have continued playing; I would have been there for everything. But sometimes you can't control these things," she says.
"After the league I found out Kevin Towns was taking over, I had a meeting with him and things were really positive so it reignited my fire to want to come back and play."
Towns, Provan says has lifted the atmosphere that drove New Zealand's best player, Igasan, away from the team.
"He's brought a whole new approach to the game," she says. "He's brought in a whole lot more freedom for the players off the field and on it.
"The environment is a whole lot healthier in terms of people being able to get things wrong in practice and feel OK about it. He's just very, very positive in how he approaches the game and how he approaches the girls.
"Already you can feel, compared to the last time I was involved in it, that it's a lot happier environment."
That's why she's smiling.
AUSTRALIA TESTS
Today: Dunedin, 2.30pm
Tuesday: Oamaru, 6.30pm
Saturday: Christchurch, 2.30pm
Sunday: Christchurch, 2.30pm
