<strong>Bay</strong> <strong>Harbour</strong> News Wednesday <strong>June</strong> <strong>23</strong> <strong>2021</strong> 14 OUR PEOPLE – CALEB BALLIN 40 years of hockey and still involved Carlton Redcliffs was recently awarded New Zealand Hockey Club of the Year. Samantha Mythen talks to president Caleb Ballin Tell me about your connection to Redcliffs? I grew up way at the top of Moncks Spur, at the back of Redcliffs. My first house after I got married was in Cashmere, but we then worked our way around the hills and now we are back living in Redcliffs. What makes Redcliffs such a good place to call home? It’s the community and for me, being able to see the water really makes this area so special. There’s also a lot of great people here. It feels like home. What is your day job? I wear a few different hats but one of my main roles is managing director of a nationwide project management company that I founded about 13 years ago. That occupies a fair bit of my time and then I’m also involved with property investment and other bits and pieces. My first major job was working on the Christchurch Art Gallery, I was lucky enough to get involved in that when I was about 24. How would you define yourself? I look at myself as a hardworking person, family focused. I love sport and I’d like to think I give back to our community, such as being involved with Sumner Surf Lifesaving over the years and more recently Carlton Redcliffs Hockey. Tell me about your hockey journey; you said you started when you were a young boy? What inspired you to start hockey? It wasn’t so much something that inspired me, but when I went to Redcliffs School, at the time, you couldn’t really do anything but play hockey. There were bins full of hockey sticks outside the classrooms. At lunchtime everyone played hockey. It was a unique period of time. Redcliffs has since produced so many great players and coaches that have played at the highest level. Were there many injuries? Oh absolutely. There were no mouth guards and shin guards, it was just playing on the grass. I rolled my ankle playing a lot of hockey and so had to get ankle reconstruction but other than that, touch wood, nothing too bad personally. Did you ever think of pursuing hockey as a sporting career? It was always more of a hobby for me. I played at a reasonable level but I got really busy with business and with family. I finished up hockey when I was quite young, around <strong>23</strong>. This is an age where most people are probably playing hockey in their peak. SUCCESS: Pat Barwick, Caleb and Miranda Ballin with the New Zealand Hockey Club of the Year trophy. (Right) – Caleb Ballin in action at the national masters tournament. Instead, I finished up and had a bit of a break for five years and then got back into it. That was quite cool as I had not realised how much I had missed hockey until I got back into playing again. How long have you been president of the Carlton Redcliffs club? I started a couple of months before Covid-19 hit, around February. Pat Barwick, who was president for 10 years and has given so much to the club, is now focusing on what she really loves, which is coaching and mentoring. So, it was my time to put my hand up and give back. I joke that Pat took me out for coffee one day and I unwittingly agreed to become president and I don’t quite know how it happened, but it did. How long have you been a member of the club for? I started playing for Carlton Redcliffs when I was about five, so it’s been a few years now, probably about 40 on and off. Tell me about the club, it’s history and it’s members The club history goes right back to 1928 when the original Redcliffs Club was founded. More recently, we have amalgamated with the Carlton Women’s Club forming Carlton Redcliffs back in 1996. The club has about 350 people as members. We are really, really lucky with the quality of coaches and people in the club. A lot of them have played at a high level and they’ve come back with their children and have given back with coaching. I can think of three or four who have played for the Black Sticks and a number of Canterbury reps. The club is made of really good people and the family focus. It makes my job really easy. I’m really proud of these people. What motivates you as club president? It’s about giving back to a club I am really proud of. I’ve always played for this club, I’ve never played for anyone else and it was a chance to use some of my skills in business to help improve the club in a number of different areas. I’ve got four daughters who all play hockey and my wife is on the club committee, so we are deeply involved in hockey. You might as well be all in. Do you still compete now? I’m still playing for the masters. I was in the Canterbury masters team last year and we won the national title which was pretty cool. I really enjoyed that. I will probably keep playing until my body tells me I can’t. What has playing hockey taught you? There are so many parallels between sport and what it teaches you about life but for me in terms of a business context, playing in your position and doing your job really well is something I’ve taken away from my time in hockey. The idea that in hockey not everything goes your way. Sometimes you will have a great game, other times you won’t and you will have to find ways to refocus and get back into it – that’s like life as well. It’s also about the great friendships you get from sport and also the idea of being humble. How you win is just as important as how you lose. What have been some of the highlights of your hockey career? Some of the things that jump out aren’t the games we’ve won but rather the friendships you make. You get to play when you’re younger at a reasonable level and then you go back and play Masters where you’re still playing with some of the people you played with 20 years ago which is pretty cool. What is the most important thing to you about who you’ve become in terms of your hockey playing? As a club, and myself personally, we are trying to make hockey more accessible for kids. Not all New Zealanders have the opportunity to be able to afford to watch their kids play a game. But the idea that a family could watch their child play a sport and be proud of them is such a powerful thing. As a club, we also have things in place such as scholarships, getting kids playing who otherwise would not have been able to afford to play. This is really important to me and to my wife and the club as a whole. We’ve just taken on several players from a lower docile school and have provided them with equipment and paid their fees and got them involved and just the look on their faces when they got their new uniform and new gear, it was so special to see. You mentioned your whole family is involved in the club, tell me more. Our weekends are quite busy with four games of hockey and my daughters have got no choice obviously playing for Redcliffs. I think they are pretty loyal as well, they really enjoy it. I would have been happy with them playing any sport but if you do FAMILY AFFAIR: Caleb Ballin with (from left) Lily, Miranda, Neve, Willow and Mila. know a sport as a parent it’s great because you can teach them and be a part of it. It’s pretty cool. I really love the idea of children playing sports, there are so many good things about it. There was of course, a gentle nudge from me to play hockey but they have to want to play it themselves and enjoy it, otherwise it is not sustainable. Does your wife play hockey? No and I think that’s probably one of her regrets is actually not playing hockey. She absolutely loves the game but was a really good sprinter at school and rode horses. She didn’t really have an opportunity to play hockey but if she had that time again she would have loved to have played hockey. She loves watching our girls play. She plays socially and it’s quite funny as the girls give her quite a hard time for her skill-set. How do you survive these early winter mornings playing hockey? It gets pretty busy on the weekends with the different games and I also go and watch the other teams in the club. As a family, we have all just committed to hockey and know it is absolutely going to take over during winter and it just becomes a part of your life. So winter is very much focused on sport and then summer is a bit more relaxed, we do more surfing. Why should people try hockey? I am obviously biased but I do think the first thing is that any team sport a child plays is fantastic. I think people should try hockey though, because the game is incredibly skilled. It’s fast and you can play it for a long time. Like for me, I started as a five year old and now I’m still playing, which is a really cool thing. It is a dynamic, fast, and exciting game, and as a team sport, there are so many great things you can get out of it.
Latest Canterbury news at starnews.co.nz Wednesday <strong>June</strong> <strong>23</strong> <strong>2021</strong> <strong>Bay</strong> <strong>Harbour</strong> News 15
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