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2006
Still No Place Like Home For Jet-Setter Hayley
by Jeremy Ruane
It's early August, and the annual exodus of New Zealand soccer talent heading to North America to resume or commence scholarships at various US universities is at its zenith.
Foremost among this footballing brains trust is a young lady for whom transit between the USA and New Zealand is set to become so frequent that if she's not already on first-name terms with the majority of the flight stewards and “trolley-dollies”, she soon will be!
As things stand, New Zealand women's captain Hayley Moorwood clocks up her fair share of Airpoints migrating between Auckland and her home away from home at Virginia Commonwealth University.
But such are the plans for the New Zealand women's soccer team over the next couple of years that the reigning Sport Auckland Sportswoman of the Year is going to become even more of a jetsetter than is currently the case.
“I'm so excited about next year, to be honest”, beams the bright-eyed twenty-two-year-old. “I've spoken to all the girls, and they all feel the same about the way things are shaping up.
“It looks really good for the women's side of things over the next year or two. There are so many international fixtures planned for us, including the Women's World Cup qualifiers, from which we'll hopefully qualify for the finals in China. And not just qualify, but hopefully win a couple of games over there too.
“Then there are the Olympics to look forward to in 2008 … there's so much happening, and I'm hoping to be back here as much as possible and looking forward to being part of it all”.
Hayley spent the last night of her latest stint on home turf taking part in the first training session of New Zealand's Auckland-based players … “and I loved it. It's been over a year now since we were together as a team, and I've missed that whole environment.
“I'll be back in December, as will just about all the overseas-based girls, so NZ Soccer is planning to get everyone together for some training camps over the Christmas-New Year period, while everyone is home for the festive season. Needless to say, I'm really looking forward to them, and I haven't even left for VCU yet!!”
When she arrives in Virginia, Hayley will be donning the captain's armband of her college - a rare honour for a Kiwi in the US college system. “It's a great honour to be captain of any team”, she says modestly, “let alone one in America at a college where I've only been studying for a year.
“We played five games during our spring season in April, and those were my first games as VCU's captain. Things went well - it was a good build-up ahead of the season which commences later this month.
“It looks like it's going to be a pretty promising season ahead of us, to be honest. The team's great. We've got a few good players coming in from all over the world - Holland, Canada, France - so it looks pretty good for the upcoming season”.
Hayley will be looking to lead Virginia through a campaign in which one of the targets is bettering their best-ever efforts of last season - a highest-ever ranking of 28th, out of 308 schools rated in the NCAA Women's Division One competition.
As well, they reached the second round of the end-of-season NCAA Tournament, where they fell to the legendary North Carolina Tar Heels, still the most successful college in the history of US women's soccer.
It's not a case of all play and no work for our intrepid leader while at VCU, however. “Studies are going really well. I'm a psychology major, and I'm really enjoying the papers I'm doing - they're all interesting. Eventually I want to get into sports psychology, which I'll probably have to come back here to do, so it's actually worked out really well.
“Right now, I'm getting good grades at VCU, which is important for your eligibility to play. You're not allowed to play if you don't pass your tests, so it keeps you on top of things.
“In season, when we're on the road, just about everyone takes their schoolwork with them because of that need to stay on schedule. I think it's good - it gives you a good balance between schoolwork and soccer, and you've also got to fit a social life in as well - you've got to get out and about just to keep yourself sane!!”
There's no question in Hayley's mind as to which of the three Ss matters most, however. “Soccer's my life - it always has been. But it's good to get studies in there as well, so I'm actually quite happy that we have to keep our grades up.
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      photo courtesy Victoria Commonwealth University
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“To come out with a degree is a bonus, and it surprises me somewhat to think how disciplined I can be, in terms of being able to balance everything so I can conclude my schoolwork with good grades, as well as achieve some of my soccer-playing goals”.
All the time she's away, though, home is never far from Hayley's thoughts. “I love New Zealand. I love being home all the time, but in saying that, it's always good to branch out and travel every now and then before coming back into the NZ environment and making the most of my time here.
“I'm excited to be going back to VCU, of course, but I feel like I've settled in at home again. I'll always miss my family and friends. Every time I leave it gets harder. Once I'm on the plane and the door`s closed, I'm fine, but the initial leaving - saying goodbye at the airport - is always hard. It's a big deal with me.
“I'll have to get used to it though”, she giggles. “I'll soon be back and forward all the time from VCU - I'm pretty much a jet-setter at the moment!!
“Seriously, I'm quite lucky to be travelling, coming back and forth all the time. I'm really happy with what I'm doing at the moment. Where better than the States to get good football? I'm quite happy to go over there for four months, then come back for a holiday for five or six weeks, then go back and come back here again …”, and another sentence ends in laughter.
While here on this occasion, Hayley has been at her imperious yet impish best in the Lynn-Avon United engine room, a ten-goal haul in eleven league and cup appearances seeing the midfield general heading back to VCU as her club's joint-top goalscorer for the season so far.
“Playing with Lynn-Avon again over the last three months has been special. I love that team, and the coaches, Jill and Dene Gilmore - they're awesome. My team-mates are some of my good friends, and I was looking forward to coming home and playing alongside them even from the time I went back to the US in January. It's just such a good environment”.
Lynn-Avon will certainly miss a player who invariably gives their game an extra dimension with her movement, vision and passing prowess. But given goal difference looks increasingly like being the decisive factor in this year's Northern Premier Women's League title chase, it's her firepower they will miss most of all.
How ironic this is, as Hayley herself has previously admitted that goalscoring is the one aspect of her game which could be improved. And like the dedicated young lady she is, she has been working on doing just that, with the rewards coming against East Coast Bays and Papakura in June, her first hat-tricks in senior level football since netting three in a game for the Auckland U-17s in 2000.
One of her team-mates in that rather lethal age-grade combination - they scored 63 goals in just five games - is also heading to North America very shortly, but Hannah Rishworth is detouring via Holland and Russia, as part of New Zealand's U-20 Women's World Cup Finals squad.
“Oh, to be young again!” laughs New Zealand's youngest-ever senior squad captain, who, like many of her peers, is hoping to replicate the U-20s' feats at senior level in order to have her own World Cup memories to reflect on in twenty years' time.
“That squad has come a long way in the last year or so - I think they've improved immensely, and they've had so much going on over that time as well, with trips to Australia, Samoa, Argentina and now Holland and the finals in Russia.
“It's good to put the girls into that type of environment, which is similar to what we experience in the States. At VCU we train every day and play twice a week, so the environment NZ Soccer is introducing us to is going to see us progress a long way. It looks good, it looks good”.
As do Hayley's future plans, “even though this is the one question I hate having to answer!”, she groans, half in jest, as the final boarding call for the first leg of another trip to Richmond, Virginia, is heard in the background.
“I'd like to think I'll still be in the New Zealand squad, one which has qualified for another Women's World Cup Finals and Olympic Games. I'm not going to be too old by then - I'll only be twenty-seven, but with all these U-20s coming through, you can't take anything for granted.
“And despite my love of my country, I still want to be bettering myself football-wise by playing overseas - hopefully I`ll pick up a professional contract and be paid to play. Nothing like Thierry Henry or anyone of that calibre, but enough to get by, live on and play the game I love.
“By then”, grins a by now mischievous Miss Moorwood as she prepares to resume her jet-setting lifestyle, “I hope I've at least finished my schooling!”
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