Life plans different direction for young sportsmen

Life plans different direction for young sportsmen

It was his maternal granddad Ted Naden who first whispered encouraging words towards Nick Hawke’s sporting prowess.

Throughout school years Nick did his sporting hero granddad proud – excelling at cricket and football and making the top teams at Sacred Heart College in both codes. Long term Nick dreamed of turning his talent into a serious sporting career - but it turned out that life had other plans.

First came a back injury at 15, then another more serious at 19. Years of pain, physio and learning how much can go wrong with a body followed.

Despite his injuries, Nick still managed a season of cricket for Somerset team Minehead in the UK as a batsman, but he was realistic enough to know big picture sport was no longer an option.

The death of his granddad brought Nick back to New Zealand and, wondering what to do with his life, his nurse mother began whispering a different kind of message to Nick. Her suggestion, that Nick transform his love of sport and knowledge of injuries into becoming a specialised rehab therapist.

Both Nick and his dad took some convincing. “I was a bit iffy about the whole thing,” says Nick, 23. “I wasn’t really a touchy type person.”

Nevertheless an initial enquiry into natural healing college Wellpark led Nick to enrol: now he’s just about to graduate with a Diploma in Therapeutic Massage. His new dream now is to be a sporting injury therapist to rugby World Cup teams soon to hit our shores.

“I’ve learned this is a job with a real future,” says Nick. “Everyone has less time these days and any downtime – whether from business or sport – costs people money, so people are more open to things like massage to keep them going.”

For William Taylor, part of the great Taylor rugby family, the life change came through wanting to get away from an unhealthy working environment.

William – son of former All Black Murray Taylor and nephew of Warwick Taylor and an accomplished sportsman himself – had been working as a plumber and gas fitter for around six years, but wanted a change away from the chemicals and unsocial hours and also chose to train as a massage therapist at Wellpark.
“I’d grown up around body therapies with an uncle who was a chiropractor and a mother working as a receptionist for a chiropractor,” says William, 26 who has also used body therapies to help treat his own sporting and other injuries.

Since graduating from Wellpark (www.wellpark.co.nz), William has set up a thriving practice in Grey Lynn and now treats people from teenagers through to those in their late seventies. He has also worked as a massage therapist for the Auckland Provincial Rugby Team.

For Nick Hawke, a stint working at Whangamata over the summer break convinced him his mum’s prompting had been right. He loved the work – and the money he made.

“And you mention to anyone at a party that you do massage and they’ll soon asking you to give their shoulders a rub,” laughs the laid-back sports mad Aucklander.

Now, while his former classmates are doing things like law or marketing, Nick, like William, hopes to one day open his own clinic. Meantime he’s got some inside contacts who work for Australian rugby teams and from their advice is hoping this may lead to working with an Australian team. He has also discussed options to train in the UK as a professional football team therapist.

“I was a bit unsure about the whole holistic aspect of studying massage, but I’ve learned so much about things I never knew about, like acupressure and reflexology and how points on your foot can relate to your whole body,” says Nick.

“I’ve never been a real book smart kind of guy, but we have great small classes which means we get lots of attention and the other students have really helped me with things like studying anatomy and physiology.”

He also likes that the science and methods behind treatments such as massage keep growing, meaning there are always new techniques and things to learn.
“For a while after school and after the injuries it was quite tricky knowing what I was going to do with my life,” says Nick.

“But this is still all part of the same dream, having that lifestyle where you are around sport, but this is just with a different twist.”

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