Photography: Petra Mingneau.
When Silver Ferns captain Karin Burger arrives at our Woman’s Day photoshoot, she’s positively glowing. The superstar athlete explains she still feels on top of the world after the Ferns shocked the netball world – but not themselves – by claiming gold at the Commonwealth Games.
“Honestly, I’m still pinching myself,” she smiles.
“It still feels quite unreal, but how cool?! It was my first time captaining a big event like that too because I didn’t attend the last Games due to injury.”
The victory tastes even sweeter because Karin, 33, led the Ferns to victory in Edinburgh after an incredibly turbulent time for netball in New Zealand.
“We know how much we love this sport and how resilient we are, and that we can push through anything because we enjoy each other so much,” she says of the squad.
“Regardless of what we’re going through, our end goal is just to be out there on court, enjoy ourselves – and win!”
For Karin, getting to the top of the podium serves as a marker of how far she’s come, not only as a netballer and a leader, but as a person as well.
“I’ve changed a lot,” she confesses.
“When I was younger, I really thought harder was better – training, playing, life… Now I realise that’s not the case. I’m much more clinical about where I spend my energy these days, on and off the court.”
United through the tough times
It can’t be overstated what the win meant for a sport that’s spent the past year being publicly pulled apart, with coach Dame Noeline Taurua stood down, then reinstated after a bruising stand-off with Netball New Zealand, then uncertainty over the ANZ Premiership leaving players unsure whether they’d have a job to go to.
“We all went through that tough period together,” Karin says of the Ferns.
“We got to know each other as people off the court more – what we liked and didn’t like, what our pressure buttons were. We were very connected as a team in the end.”
The players left in limbo
Karin – who this year played for the Sunshine Coast Lightning in Australia’s Super Netball competition – becomes visibly emotional as she discusses the toll the uncertainty has taken on players who couldn’t secure contracts in Australia or other overseas leagues.
“It was very sad and stressful at times. It’s that group that my heart goes out to because that’s their job and their livelihood – and for the last however long, they didn’t know what the next six months looked like for them.”
From club player to Silver Fern
With Netball New Zealand now backed by entrepreneur Anna Mowbray and her husband, All Blacks legend Ali Williams, things are finally looking brighter for the sport in Aotearoa.
Karin has helped the group through a difficult period and out the other side with a medal, giving her a chance to pause and reflect on her own journey.
At 18, the Cape Town-born star moved to New Zealand from South Africa and began playing at club level, knowing no one in any netball circle. It was eight years until she made the national side.
“When I first started as a Fern, I was 26 and I was the baby in the team, but now I’m well and truly the elder,” she laughs, adding that she’s so far resisted any urge to join in with her young Gen Z teammates’ TikTok dances!
The lessons of leadership
Leading a squad of players in their early twenties has made her rethink how she approaches her role.
Karin says, “The biggest learning curve for me is understanding that everyone’s perspective is different because of their life experiences and where they’re at, so it doesn’t make it a right or a wrong opinion – it’s just different.”
But the harder lesson for the talented athlete has been to learn to be generous to herself. Remarkably, for a woman who has just captained her country to gold after her first domestic season across the Tasman, Karin came away from her first stint in Queensland thinking she hadn’t improved quickly enough.
“I personally didn’t feel like I grew fast enough, so I’m really looking forward to giving it another crack. I feel like I sometimes have to tell myself to be nice to myself, and appreciate and acknowledge the things I’ve achieved. “But at the same time, if I didn’t have that mentality, I wouldn’t have reached the highs I have because I’m always trying to improve and do better.”
Taking a leap
That instinct to keep pushing is exactly what took her across the ditch in the first place, swapping a settled life in Canterbury, where she played for the Mainland Tactix, for a brand-new competition and city.
Karin explains, “For me, it was purely about putting myself in uncomfortable positions. It had turned into Groundhog Day and I got to a point where I needed more of a challenge, so I moved away from my security blanket to start fresh.”
Now splitting her time between Christchurch and the Sunshine Coast, a place she loves thanks to its laidback and outdoorsy vibe, Karin’s content with living out
of a suitcase. She says her perspective on her netball-focused life has shifted in recent years.
Her blissful break
It’s how she came to spend her post-season break doing gloriously little. While some of her younger teammates hired a car and toured around Europe, Karin took herself off alone to the Mediterranean island of Mallorca – and refused to move!
“All I did was hotel, beach, hotel, beach,” she laughs.
“They’re like, ‘Oh, you’re going by yourself,’ like it was a sad thing. I was like, ‘Yeah, exactly!’ I didn’t want to be bothered by anybody. I didn’t want anybody telling me what they felt like doing. That was my time.”
Happy with her own path
Comfort in her own company has taken a while to arrive and so has her peace with the fact that her life looks nothing like she might have imagined when she was younger.
“I was having this conversation with my sister, who’s back in South Africa,” reflects Karin.
“She went the family route with getting married and having kids, while I went with sport and my brother is in computer science, so we’re all very different. But we always talk about how it’s so easy to envy someone else’s life. “There’s a typical South African way and that’s where my sister went – you go to uni, meet somebody, get married and have kids, all by the time you’re 30. Maybe you have your first house as well. I say to her, ‘You’re married, you’ve got a family, you’ve
got kids and you’ve got that life sorted.’ “I might have my career and netball, but I don’t have that. However, I’m extremely happy with the way my life is. For me, my life’s perfect!”
A future beyond the court
While her focus is very much on next year’s World Cup in Sydney, the gold-winning captain is pragmatic about having a plan for life after netball and is currently studying nutrition at university.
“I’m soaking this time up as much as I can because you never know,” smiles Karin.
“It’s a rollercoaster – I’ve gone from being down in the pits one year, feeling the worst ever and not knowing how to get out of there, to being on top of the world.”
“I tell myself to remember that moment because when you’re back at rock bottom, you’ve got to be able to tell yourself, ‘Remember you’ve been through this.’ You do get out the other side. It does get better!”
