Modesty an apt middle name
Our coach who trounced the world
TAINI Jamison’s a national taonga (treasure) and Rotorua can be proud, very proud she’s all ours. As we don’t know her middle name we’re giving her one of our own. It’s Modesty, the reason became apparent as her profile progresses.
We’d spent at least two hours in her company before the subject came up of her being a representative basketballer, followed by time as the stunningly successful coach of the national squad. In 1967 the Taini Jamison-led team (three Rotorua players included) trounced all-comers at the second world championships in Perth, most by a staggering margin. A six-month stint coaching Jamaica’s coaches followed. This of course, was in pre-netball days.
Let us add that it was us who raised the topic of her sporting success story. When we tackled her about why she hadn’t mentioned it she became all school teacher-ish on us (her working life was devoted to teaching), accusing us of not asking.
Under pressure she says what she’s done for basketball/netball’s because of her love of the game and those who’ve played it under her guidance across the generations. There’ve been legions of them.
With Taini so reluctant to talk about her basketball-netball successes we consult someone who willingly fills in the gaps. Cue Netball Rotorua secretary, Mary Thompson. She’s emphatic that Taini’s meant everything to netball, from international to local level. ‘‘She’s an amazing person, a real leader, an inspiration . . . a life member of the New Zealand Association, our patron.’’
Rotorua to the core as Taini Jamison is she’s a rarity among local iwi, she’s not of Te Arawa lineage.
Her father, Te Rangiataahua (Rangi) Royal, was of Ngati Raukawa descent, her mother’s whakapapa is Dunedin’s Ngai Tahu iwi.
Rotorua-born and her early years spent in the family home where the Third Place Cafe now is, her education began in Ruatoki where her father’s Maori Affairs job had taken him. By the time she was six the family were back in Rotorua, living in Grey St and Taini was enrolled at Whakarewarewa Native School. In those days it was in the vicinity of the Arikikapapapa golf course. It was on to the Rotorua High and Grammar School where she was when her father, amaori Battalion captain, was severely wounded.
Yet againwe had to rely on someone other than Taini to learn his heroism under fire in Crete earned him the Military Cross.
On his return to New Zealand, Maori Affairs posted him to its Wellington head office and Taini entered Wellington Girls College. ‘‘It was so vastly different from the co-ed school I was used to up here . . . some girls even knitted in class! I was there on VE Day and everyone went wild, rushing around banging pots and pans; we were sent home,’’
Her next educational port of call was Wellington Teachers College. In Wellington Taini continued to play the basketball she’d begun at Whakarewarewa. In Wellington she added the indoor variety to her repertoire. Friends talked her into joining an interpretative dance group. ‘‘It was gymnastic-type dancing, I was pretty hopeless, hadn’t a clue but we put on this little concert. Because of the post-war shortages we couldn’t get leotards, instead we dyed men’s pink underpants those were practical days.’’ She also joined the Ngati Poneke Maori Club. ‘‘At home’’ she’d been in the Taiporutu group, co-founded by her father and Tai Mitchell.
Ngati Poneke were in hot demand for entertaining at government-run functions. ‘‘We performed for famous people like Gracie Fields in Parliament Buildings.’’
Her first teaching post was back in home territory at Whangamarino Primary. But it was a false start to her chalk face career. ‘‘The school was closed for at least a term, maybe longer, because of the 1947 polio epidemic. When it reopened I was teaching in the cloakroom; Bea [the legendary Bea Yates] was one of the pupils.’’
Young teachers didn’t have a say on their placements. Taini was shipped off to remote Torere on the East Coast. ‘‘I got taken down in amaori Affairs truck taking tiles for a house being built down that way’’. Further county service followed west of Huntly, ‘‘cadging a ride’’ into the township to play basketball. With her on-court skills now evident, she was selected as the Waikato team’s shooter. She represented Waikato only briefly before being transferred again, this time to Rotokawa. Seven years at Horohoro School followed. By then she’d met husband-to-be Tom Jamison, coach of the indoor basketball team she’s joined.
The account of the phase of her life that followed is harrowing.
Three months’ after she and Tom married he was dead. ‘‘We married in the May holidays, I buried him in the August holidays’’. Tom’s death would never have occurred in today’s climate of tight OSH rules and regulations. The Kahukura hall’s indoor court was so narrow it virtually touched the wall. Tom took a tumble during a game, hitting hit his head on that wall. The injury claimed his life.
Taini was newly pregnant. However did she cope? ‘‘I just had to; there wasn’t much of a widow’s pension in those days. I had some wonderful friends’’. She continued on at Horohoro while her Rotokawa cousin, ‘‘Tup’’ Cookson, cared for baby Tom, named after the father he never knew. Taini reclaimed him at weekends.
She was living on the unsealed Old Taupo Rd. ‘‘The school bus trip to Horohoro was a nightmare. When it was sunny the dust was terrible, when it rained the mud and dirt were just as bad, probably worse.’’
After eight years at Horohoro, Taini moved to the closer-to-home Malfroy School.
All the while she was playing basketball, initially for the Lord’s team, insisting it wasn’t as grand as it sounds. ‘‘I formed it when I came back to town, it was mostly teachers, we bought our first leather ball from Frank Lord and he used to pump it up so his name just stuck.’’
Games were in the Government Gardens. ‘‘We were in a very small association, [the late] Jean Lodge was in charge. She made us believe that we were good . . . thatwe couldwin things.’’ It was Mrs Lodge who formed Rotorua’s first Maori women’s rep basketball team which Taini played in for ten years, saying with that innate modesty of hers that it was a team which ‘‘managed to win’’ the national tournament there or four times. When Taini quit as a player she coached the team for another decade.
Her memories of the annual Kurangaituku tournament, first played in 1933, are to quote her, ‘‘wonderful’’. She remains closely linked to it, holding various roles in keeping it the annual success story it’s always been. She’s served variously as treasurer, secretary and president of what’s now Netball Rotorua.
Encourage her to compare today’s game with those of her playing days and she comes close to scoffing. ‘‘It’s not as exciting now, we played outdoors two or three games a day, and we had the wind and rain to contend with. Now they play the big games inside and if they fall over they are often taken off. When we fell over you were lucky if they gave you a bandage, you just played on.’’
Basketball/netball haven’t been her sole sporting focus. She played tennis, going to various Maori tennis tournaments and has a personal affinity with them. ‘‘My father had a hand in operating them and Maori golf too.’’
She taught 7 and 8 year olds at Malfroy until her retirement and has never contemplated remarrying. Rude enough to ask why not we receive another scolding. ‘‘Don’t ask me a silly question like that, I’ve always been too busy.’’
Busy: That’s Taini Jamison personified. done if you’re choosing to wear heels— don’t wear heels you can’t actually walk in.
As I sat at my computer writing away one-day this week I looked out the window and saw a woman with what looked like 6-inch heels (probably a heel-size that is worn commonly during the daytime in places like New York . . . not so much Rotorua) with a pretty casual outfit. While the outfit itself wasn’t matched too well, it was the way she was walking that I felt ruined her whole style.
She was taking weird little steps in her shoes — the walk one has when the shoes she’s wearing are too high for her— and looked as though she could have fallen over at any moment.
Obviously she likes heels but when choosing them, don’t select a pair that you think look fabulous but you can’t actually walk in, unless of course you are only buying them to look at which is fine.