Te Hiraka Chase 17, Tuhia te ao marama Hohepa 17, Bevan Taylor 18 are 3 young hockey players from Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Ruamata.
This year the students split up in an attempt to reach their goal of attending the New Zealand National U18 Regional Hockey Tournament for high performance athletes.
Te Hiraka Chase made the U18 Midlands Men's team, Tuhia Te Ao Marama Hohepa made the North Harbour U18 Women's team and Bevan Taylor moved to Christchurch and earned a position in the Canterbury U18 Men's team.
Te Hiraka has had to travel to Tauranga and Hamilton to be a part of the Midlands Men's team.
Tuhia traveled weekly to North Harbour on a Friday, returning early on a Tuesday morning to attend kura and her school hockey games.
Bevan moved to Christchurch and has had support from extended whānau.
Te whānau o Ruamata is very proud of their students striving to achieve their goals and aspirations in hockey.
Hockey is a very difficult sport to break into at high performance levels, however, these 3 have been lucky to have been supported by their school, as well as senior and representative teams over the years.
This has been a great achievement not only for the athletes, but their kura who have a total of 127 students with only 1 Wharekura boy's team and 1 Wharekura girl's team which struggled to make up numbers each year.
These are outstanding results for Kura Kaupapa Māori.
Their whānau are proud to have one player in the North, One in the central North Island and one in the South.
All 3 students and their teams have made it into the top 4 positions at the annual U18 National Hockey Tournament being held at present in Napier and now they have a chance to compete in grand final this Saturday.