When glancing at the team sheet of the Springbok women’s sevens team going to the Paris Olympic Games, it is clear that Tuks is where good players get an opportunity to become extraordinary, while the strength of the local club league for women’s rugby is also reflected in this team.
Five of the Bok team’s players finetuned their rugby skills playing for the Tuks sevens side.
Last year, Nadine Roos was South Africa’s Women’s Sevens Rugby Player of the Year, and Libbie Janse van Rensburg was the 15-code Women’s Player of the Year. Both will be playing in Paris. Roos as scrumhalf or centre and Janse van Rensburg as flyhalf. In their days playing for Tuks, they have combined countless times to score tries, setting up Tuks to victory. Their flair has even led to Tuks beating some national sides in international tournaments.
It has been some time since the two of them have played together. However, Janse van Rensburg, a full-time employee at TuksRugby, is confident that they can again create some moments of brilliance for the Bokke.
“When we take to the field, Nadine plays brilliantly of me and vice versa. So, we should be able to create moments of brilliance in Paris. Hopefully, it will lead to points on the board for the Boks,” she said after the team announcement.
Earlier this year, during the HSBC Sevens Tournament in Vancouver, Roos scored in all five games. She also kicked two conversions and was amongst the team’s leading tacklers over all three days.
Kemi Baloyi captained Tuks to win the inaugural Varsity Women’s Sevens Tournament 2019. She played for the Boks Sevens during the 2022 Commonwealth Games.
Marlize de Bruin has quit netball to focus on playing sevens rugby in 2022. Doing so, she proved that ‘change is as good as a holiday’. At the end of that year, she played for the Boks at the Sevens World Cup in Cape Town.
There were often references to De Bruin being South Africa’s fittest netball player. She has the distinction of being part of teams that won every major local netball tournament.
Liske Lategan is the fifth Tuks player who will play for the Boks in Paris. She was also selected for the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Lategan is the niece of Pieter Hendricks, the winger who scored the first try for the Springboks during the 1995 World Cup Tournament.
– Another member of the Springbok women’s sevens team who will participate in the Olympic Games in Paris and has made her mark as a rugby player locally in Pretoria is Shiniqwa Lamprecht. She is a former Learner of Hoërskool Eldoraigne in Centurion, where she matriculated in 2021.
This centre of the Harlequins women’s team already made a name for herself on the rugby field as a schoolgirl and at the age of 16 she already played representative rugby for the Blue Bulls’ under-16 girls’ team.
She was honoured as the Harlequins women’s team’s top three-scorer two years ago, before making her breakthrough at senior provincial level and later also at international level.
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