5 After playing at the Athens and Beijing Olympics Stacey Carr is watching the London Games from Ashburton. Carr has gone from living and breathing hockey, to working behind a desk, day in, day out. The former Black Stick talks to Erin Tasker about tackling the next phase of her life.
Life after hockey
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or seven years, Stacey Carr’s life was dedicated to hockey. It was a life which took her around the world – including two Olympic Games – and made her a household name; but two years ago the real world came calling. Two serious knee injuries, a loss of passion for the sport, and a yearning to live a real life saw her announce her retirement from international hockey following the Delhi Commonwealth Games, and take up a position as marketing manager and logistics co-ordinator for the family business, Carr Agricultural Limited, back in her home town of Ashburton. Now, she and partner Charlie McKerchar are here to stay. They’ve bought a small lifestyle block on the outskirts of Tinwald and soon they’ll start planning their wedding. After three years, Charlie got down on a bended knee during the couple’s recent three-week holiday to Vietnam. Stacey couldn’t be happier to be engaged, and back living in the real world. She said she missed so many events and occasions – including many of her friends’ 21sts – due to her
hockey career, and now as her group of friends move onto the weddings stage of life she’s determined to be at each and every one. It’s a long way from her former life as one of New Zealand’s top hockey players, but life is good. Stacey grew up on her family’s Mayfield farm, attending Lismore School before heading off to boarding school at Rangi Ruru in Christchurch, where her talent started shining through. Hockey wasn’t always her thing though. “Mum tried to get me into it when I was about four but I was hopeless, so I went to rugby and played rugby until I was 10,” she said. That was in the days where kids that age still played tackle rugby; “the way it should be”, Stacey said. She grew up with three older brothers, who all played rugby, so she learned to be tough. She loved rugby, but hockey eventually lured her back, and this time she wasn’t bad. A left hander, when she first played she was all back to front, but on her second attempt Stacey
learned to do it right. Back then, she played up at the front; it wasn’t until high school that she became a midfielder, which was where people really took notice of her. But through her career she’s also added stints as striker and a half to her repertoire. When she first started out, Canterbury was the province at the top of New Zealand hockey. And after representing Mid Canterbury in her early days, Stacey was soon picked for Canterbury and wore the red and black at the Collier Trophy – primary hockey’s big tournament. But her big break came in third form (today’s year nine) when she was picked for the New Zealand Under-15 hockey side. When she made the New Zealand Under-21 team for the Junior World Championships at age 16, she knew she had the potential to go on to bigger and better things. That potential was realised at age 18. It was 2003 when Stacey received her first call-up to the Black Sticks. Making it to the top in sport as a teenager might not be unusual these days, but back then, Stacey was a rarity.
“When I got in there was only a couple of us, and the rest were a lot older,” she said. But playing with such experienced players proved to be extremely valuable; she learned a lot of what she knows today, from those players. Her first tour of duty with the Black Sticks was to Japan in 2003, but the biggest learning curve came a year later when she was named in the squad for the Athens Olympics. There, she realised a life-long dream in the city where it all started, all those centuries ago. “I remember watching Sydney (2000) and thinking that would be cool to go to one day but I never thought then I would be at the next one,” she said. For her, the Olympics was the ultimate. If she had a choice between a world championship win, or an Olympic gold medal, the Olympic gold would win out every time. And while she didn’t come home from either the Athens or Beijing Olympics with a medal around her neck, she did return with a host of incredible memories. • Continued over page