Selina Nunn
Turning 30 is a huge milestone in any woman’s life. For Silver Fern and Mainland Tactix star defender Karin Burger, the big birthday has been a time to reflect and recharge as the talented athlete barrels through a hugely important year in the netball calendar. But it was also a great time to take stock of more personal matters.
“I was thinking the other day, ‘I’m turning 30 and I’m still single. What am I doing!?'” she laughs at our Woman’s Day photoshoot in Christchurch.
“But no, seriously, turning 30 is big. I wouldn’t say I feel more pressure, but I’ve realised I’m getting closer to my retirement from professional sport, although I quite often have to tell myself that I’m still very young.
“In previous years, I haven’t cared so much about turning 30, but when you actually start creeping towards it, it does feel intimidating. But that’s when I remind myself that there’s no set rules in life about when you have to do things and how you have to do them. I try to tell myself I can do it the way I want to, as long as I’m happy with it. As long as I’m happy, I don’t care about timing!”
Doing things a little differently has also defined the path of South African-born Karin’s netball career. Unlike her compatriots Irene van Dyk and Leana de Bruin, who both played for South Africa’s national team the Proteas, Karin arrived in Aotearoa as a fresh-faced 18-year-old with no idea what she wanted to do.
“My plans were never to permanently move to New Zealand – it was more the fact that I didn’t know what I wanted to do after school!” she confesses. “My mum had a cousin here who suggested a gap year and I thought it sounded great.”
With her uncle helping her find a netball club in Lower Hutt, Karin began to embrace her new life in the Wellington region and then decided to stay on after her visitor’s visa ran out.
Karin never expected to find a new home country, but after three or four years on Kiwi soil, she realised she didn’t want to go back to South Africa and that her future was in Godzone.
“I had built a life here and everything I knew was Kiwi,” tells Karin. “Yes, my family was in South Africa, but if I went back, I wouldn’t know what I was going back for. The life I had built for myself was amazing and it was in New Zealand.”
Of course, that included netball – although it was a slow journey to the black dress after arriving in Aotearoa with no credentials.
“I had no status of being a netballer,” recalls Karin. “I’d played juniors and school grade, but I didn’t have a name, so I started from scratch and built my way up from club netball.”
While it was tough work building a resumé and a reputation in the sport, her slightly unorthodox path meant Karin was forced to have a life outside of netball – making friends, getting work experience and exploring her new homeland.
It also meant that, as a young woman, Karin was pushed to become independent and tough as she navigated life in a new country by herself.
“I look at my 18-year-old self and I can’t quite believe who I am now,” she smiles. “I was so shy and I never put myself out there when I first moved over.
“I often think, ‘How did I even do that!?’ But it’s been 12 years of character building and that’s something high-performance sport helps you with. I’m quite grateful for the person I’ve become because of netball.”
She also had some guidance in the form of Silver Ferns star Leana, with Karin’s mum emailing the netball veteran for advice on her daughter’s behalf.
Karin laughs, “Leana sent a very straightforward email back, saying, ‘It’s going to be hard. Do you want to do this?’ At the time, I was like, ‘You’re not really helping me here!’ But looking back on it, it was exactly the right thing to do and I’d send the same email now. You have to be open and honest about how hard it’s going to be.”
It took five years for Karin to make her first franchise team – the Central Pulse – before slipping on the Silver Ferns bib in 2018, seven years after arriving in Aotearoa.
In action for the Silver Ferns in her old homeland of South Africa earlier this year.
“People always ask me how I stuck it out for so long and I’m like, ‘It wasn’t my be-all and end-all.’ It was just a part of my life, not all of it, and you really need that outlook to be a top athlete. Balance is everything.”
Life had one of its full-circle moments earlier this year when the Silver Ferns travelled to South Africa to take on the Proteas in the Netball Quad Series, where Karin was able to play in front of her whānau for the first time as a Fern.
“My family was so big on sport and when I was playing as a kid, I always had them there on the sidelines. I’d gotten so used to not having them there for my games that when I went back to South Africa and saw them all there, it was just incredible.
“Hearing them in the crowd and the huge amount of support I had from friends was so special. My family are also very proud South Africans, but my sister had printed T-shirts for them all that said ‘Team Burger’. They were black and had ferns on them, so it was heart-warming seeing them wear them on the sidelines.”
Reunited with her family in South Africa.
Now the star defender is turning her attention to this year’s Netball World Cup, also to be held in South Africa, while of course maintaining her hard-won work-life balance.
“I’ll look at studying again next year because I really want to make sure I’m broadening my horizons as much as I can. I’m really interested in nutrition, so I’m really keen to understand the science behind that.”
But she’s also eager to squeeze in some semblance of a social life! Of professional netballers, Karin says, “The problem is that our circle is quite small. The friendships I build are predominantly within my sport. It’s so hard going out and meeting new groups of people because I don’t always have the time. But it’s quality over quantity, so there are positives and negatives to it all.”
And dating? Well, Karin insists it’s always on the table!
“I was speaking with one of the girls about this the other day and she reckons that the guys say we’re intimidating – that’s why they don’t approach us!” she laughs.
“I was like, ‘OK, well, I don’t know how much nicer I’m supposed to be!’ But I always knew the social part of being a high-performance athlete was going to be tricky. I knew what I was signing up for.”
