Bernice Mene: I loved the game, I loved being out on court, I wasn’t just going to be a full time student who was doing this for pleasure.

Bernice Mene: I loved the game, I loved being out on court, I wasn’t just going to be a full time student who was doing this for pleasure.

Former Silver Fern great Bernice Mene had sporting greatness in her blood. When Bernice first got into sport she participated in Althletics, following in the footsteps of her parents who represented New Zealand at the Commonwealth Games in Athletics. Her whole family would spend every Saturday (rain dependent) at Christchurchs legendary QEII park (Even after school she would run around the track). As Bernice was tall growing up her favourite events were high jump, long jump, 200m and shot put as these events benefited from her height and long limbs. Bernice went to primary school at St Joesphs Primary in Papanui and started playing Netball from when the age of ten and never looked back. She has clear memories of those times “when I was at primary school and it was the only sport they had for primary school kids back then at our school. I remember clearly that in the sports shed they had the Netball bibs for the Netballers and only half a set of Hockey sticks.”

In 1997 Bernice moved from Christchurch to Wellington (although still playing Netball in Christchurch). At the time Lee Piper and Karen Brown approached her about joining the club they would like to form called the Southern Steel “they were challenging the St Nicholas club and if they were successful they asked me if I would go down and play and coach Netball as a job, so I would be paid to be the Netball development officer down there.” At the time Bernice was at the Hilary Commission on the front desk working with Waimarama Taumaunu, who was coaching her at Wellington. She approached Waimarama Taumaunu to get her thoughts about the offer that had been put to her and Waimarama felt it was a good idea. Once the Steel were formed Bernice took the opportunity and the rest is now history.

Bernice felt that the coaches that brought the best out of her were Wai Taumaunu and Robyn Broughton. She felt that Wai’s expertise in the defensive end helped her immensely along with “she was very disciplined and expected a lot of discipline back and she created a great team culture in P.I.C in Wellington and with a good group of girls as well.” Super coach Robyn Broughton on the other hand had the xfactor coaches seek and it “was her ability was to take a group of players and getting them to gel together and everyone had a good hard work ethic.”

When Bernice played for the Steel she was a part of the Southern Sting era where they won titles from 1999-2004. No matter who came down to Invercargill to play them, sides struggled to cope with the amazing atmosphere and support from the local community that the home crowd gave their side (The Steel also felt that they travelled well).

Bernice was up in Auckland in the later part of her playing career but found it tough to travel back and forth from Auckland to Invercargill weekly. “Yeah, I couldn’t do it now and I don’t know how I did it back then. I would spend 4 days in Auckland and on a Thursday afternoon I would fly down to Invercargill where I would train on the Thursday, Friday play Saturday (or) Sunday (Sometimes on a Friday) and fly back to Auckland and go back to school on Monday morning.”

Bernice felt that the reason why teams struggled to play them was because they had a group of players that always got on, with no pretenses. “Everyone was just local girls, hard-working and we just had a real bond amongst us for that reason. We also had Robyn at the helm and she installed great self-belief and self-confidence and we thought we could do it you know.” She felt that having players like the Gill sisters, especially Debbie who was good at sinking shots.

A scared Bernice debuted for Sliver Ferns against England, in England in 1987 at the age of seventeen. (However she had previously sat on the bench in three games but never came out on court). She marked up against Tracy Neville and felt that she “She reminded me a lot of playing against Belinda Colling, she was a ragdoll player who was a really sharp feeder into the shooters behind.” She describes her debut as a scary moment in her career but she had teammate and goalkeeper Tanya Cox throw a couple of balls into her stomach, which settled the nerves dramatically and she never looked back from there.

Seeing New Zealand play Australia in any sporting contest is always good to watch, physical, tough, torrid and even better if we win as it’s nice to beat the old foe. Bernice’s first match against Australia was against the difficult but experienced Australian shooting pairing of Nicole Cusack and Vicki Wilson. In 1998 Bernice was a part of the first ever Netball event to be in the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur which was a memorable experience and something that she could show her children, even though she was disappointed at the time. “I pulled out my Silver medal at the last Commonwealth Games when I was watching it with my kids (which I had tucked away pretty disappointed at the time) my children where pretty chuffed when they saw that. But it was something that you get and we always measured ourselves against Australia and if you came out with a silver you were disappointed but it’s still an achievement at that top level.” Australia unfortunately beat New Zealand 42-39.

In 1999, Bernice, was a part of the side that played in the Netball World Championships in Christchurch. New Zealand were the form side throughout the tournament and were slight favourites going into the final against Australia. With amazing stadium atmosphere where players couldn’t each calls from one end of the court to the other. Australia pipped New Zealand in a nail-bitter 42-41. Bernice describes the match as a match that slipped out of there grasps and was a hard loss to take. “We had the game but you never have a game when you’re only up by three or four goals, because that’s only two breaks and that’s exactly what happened. We had our opportunities as well and our shooters got blamed quite a bit because Donna missed the shot under the goal in the final few seconds. But then the defense didn’t pick up any ball at our end in the turnovers.”

Bernice felt privileged and honoured to be named as captain of the Silver Ferns in 1997 but found that there were media commitments that created extra pressure. When Bernice was announced as captain, she came back from having knee-surgery after having been told by specialists to stop playing Netball right away. Bernice suffered from having a degenerative bone chip in her knees (A bit like what Michael Jones has) and with her career just starting, she didn’t want to throw away her passion so she had to strength and re-learn how to do some of the simple things in life. “I had to learn how to walk and run again because I pronate quite badly (So to take the pressure off the outside). There was a lot of behind the scenes stuff that I had to apply myself (including Voltaren), as well as work to stay on top of.” When she was asked to become captain she was just four weeks out of surgery and she felt that it was tough mentally to get ready for the match and lead her side onto the court. But she didn’t want to let her teammates down so she played.

Back when Bernice was playing Netball the game wasn’t professional, so during the week Bernice balance training in the morning, studying to become a teacher and sports coordinator during the day and train again at night. “It was your own training in the morning and team training in the evening and they would alternate between games and court work and you would do fitness work in the morning. Leading into a big match like playing for the Silver Ferns you would train twice a day and then you would have a rest day which is probably a walk through the morning of a test, the day before a test it would be a lighter training session.”

Bernice retired in 2002 after playing over ten years of netball. In her time playing for the Steel she played with some of the best players to play Netball for New Zealand including:
• The tenacious Lesley Nicol who set up a lot of intercepts and picked up any free ball.
• The skillful Donna Loffhagen who she felt lucky to have on her team, and play against and train with
• The calm Linda Vagana where they formed a good partnership in the circle and saved many goal opportunities.
• The legendary Sandra Edge and Tracey O’Shorten

Today, Bernice is working for Hyundai where she runs the Pinnacle program. The Pinnacle program is a teenage mentoring program (it’s a part of Hyundai’s community sponsorship arm) where they send twenty students from around New Zealand through the Spirit of New Zealand and ten through Outwardbound. The key purpose of the Pinnacle Program is to help give young teenagers “leadership, presentation and public speaking skills and just work with them individually and try and grow them to be future New Zealand leaders in their chosen fields. Participants come from (from a wide range of) artists, musicians, entrepreneurs and sports people”