The golden girl of basketball
An Orewa grandmother is still lapping up her weekly dose of competitive basketball. By Hinton.
It’s Monday morning at the North Shore YMCA and the regular rhythmic pounding of basketball striking hardwood plays out like a backbeat on loop. Over on court two, there is a game going on, as there has been for 30-odd years now, among a group of, shall we say, veteran women hoopsters.
You scan the participants and your gaze settles on one of their number who, for all her lack of physical presence, stands out. She is smaller than her mates, and has the slow, purposeful gait of one for whom their sporting prime is now a distant memory. But it’s not that you notice at first. It’s the broad, beaming smile; the absolute delight that is writ large on a face clearly relishing every moment of what it is unfolding.
If you didn’t know better you might place her as a 60-something clinging to the last vestiges of her athleticism, with a hint of a bounce in her step and a court awareness that suggests she’s done this all before, many, many times over.
But you do know better. You know this is Ronnie Vance, and that she turned 80 on the same day Santa dropped off his presents, and that she has been playing basketball for, oh, 64 years now. She has been coming to this regular Monday morning run of like-minded souls for over three decades, bumping and grinding away for 90 minutes on court, and then gathering afterwards to swap stories and laughs over coffee and light snacks.
It is, in many ways, the very essence of sport: competition, community, camaraderie. And Ronnie wouldn’t miss it for the world. She has broken bones, torn muscles and strained sinew, but she keeps coming back, again and again and again.
Three years ago she told someone she would probably retire when she turned 80. Now that moment is here, she figures she’s got at least one more good year in her. At least.
‘‘I’d like to carry on if nothing happens over Christmas,’’ she tells the Sunday Star-Times. ‘‘It’s absolutely year by year at this stage, while I can still remember where I’m going.’’
Ronnie Vance, from Orewa, is what you might call a marvel. An inspiration to everyone who enters her sphere. A remarkably boundless ball of energy, defying regular conventions. She is not so much ageing gracefully, as with no regard whatsoever for the limits the rest of us live by.
Ronnie first took up basketball when she was a 16- year- old school-leaver who had started work as a milliner with Smith and Caughey’s store in Auckland city and was looking for something to keep her active.
One day, after a typical shift mastering the intricacies of the hat, she wandered up to what was then the YWCA at the top of Pitt Street and inquired as to whether she might try her hand with the epee or foil. Instead she was thrust into an entirely different sporting sphere.
‘‘ I fancied some fencing, but when I found out the price it was totally unaffordable. I was on £2 10s a week apprentice wages, and by the time you paid for train and bus fare into work . . . they said why don’t you go downstairs and have look at basketball. I thought ‘ this looks pretty good’. That’s how it started.’’
And it’s more or stopped since.
Ronnie has had one year off less never basketball since she was 16. That was when she had the first of her three children, Bobby, who would go on to become a renowned jockey and trainer on the New Zealand horse racing scene. The next two kids, daughter Nikki and her late son Bill (also a jockey and trainer), were more obliging, born in March and April respectively. She was back on court soon after their births.
She describes herself as an ‘‘energetic’’ player, good enough to make a handful of appearances for Auckland back in her day, though she has at times wondered if she chose the right sporting pathway. ‘‘I’m not all that tall, as you can imagine having a couple of jockeys in the family, and as the years went on the girls seemed to get taller and taller,’’ she says. ‘‘I can remember a tournament down in Taranaki and they were calling out to ‘Vance, get off your knees’.’’
Good things come in small packages. And Ronnie Vance has always been what you might call active. She was a keen runner in her younger days and played some tennis as well. Now she still cycles around 25km five days a week, and tucks away a 6km walk at least twice.
But she has been prepared to give most things a go. Like 10-pin bowling and indoor cricket. She even took on golf for a decade when her partner of 49 years, Wayne (‘‘We’ve been engaged for 45 years,’’ she adds with a smile) suggested it as a potential alternative to basketball. So she played both.
And, yes, she’s had her fair share of injuries. She has broken her arm and her leg playing basketball. And fractured pretty me, much all her fingers. Her hoops’ buddies tease her about it. A lot. At a recent function to mark her looming 80th birthday they even put together a mock race call chronicling her many ailments over the years.
‘‘ I’m one of those people, things fall out of the sky and hit me on the head,’’ adds Ronnie. ‘‘It got to a stage where Wayne said I’m not going to North Shore hospital with you any more because I don’t like what they’re thinking ... I started going to Southern Cross A and E in Takapuna, and one night a doctor came out, introduced himself and said, ‘it’s OK, I just wanted to meet you because I’m the only doctor here that hasn’t’.’’
The Monday morning run at the Y started over 30 years ago as an adjunct to the more serious stuff in the various leagues around the city. At one stage they had eight teams lining up; now they are doing well to scrape together two or three.
‘‘So many of the younger ones and the middle-aged ones are working and can’t get away,’’ says Ronnie. ‘‘It’s a shame. We
‘‘I love the physical exercise. It’s also meeting up with your friends, enjoying it, and still being as competitive as you can.’’
need these girls to come back because we need them to take over from us.’’
Ronnie is the oldest by about 15 years among a group that includes some hoops’ notables such as Judy Abercrombie (Tom’s mum), Ruth Jillings (Tall
Fern Zara’s mum) and broadcaster Jenny Woods. No-one takes it easy on her, though. ‘‘I wouldn’t want that,’’ she notes. ‘‘I’d give up if I felt they were stepping aside and letting me drive to the basket.
‘‘ I love the physical exercise. It’s also meeting up with your friends, enjoying it, and still being as competitive as you can. You can’t beat that special thrill of winning a game.’’
She knows she’s lucky to have good enough health at her age to still play sport. And it’s not something she takes for granted.
Two years ago her granddaughter Maija Vance ( also a jockey) suffered a horrendous fall in a jumps race at Rotorua that left her with serious spinal injuries. Doctors worried she might not walk again. But Maija is made of staunch Vance stock and, after a long, tough rehab, she made it back on to her feet. Ronnie was watching the race on TV that day and made such a commotion she had to assure neighbours she was OK. ‘‘ It was so frightening, so upsetting . . . but she’s amazing. She really is.’’ It runs in the family.