Versatile Black Fern helping to get Galway into shape

Talking Sport

SOME may know this lady as Connacht forward George Naoupu’s wife. However, that creates a false impression of 29-year-old fitness instructor Sene Naoupu as she is very much her own woman.

Having just launched her own licensed fitness programme in a number of gyms across Galway City, Naoupu, who qualifies to play for this country next year, is currently aiming to break into the Ireland women’s seven rugby team.

For own part, Naoupu has been playing rugby back in her native New Zealand since she was 13 years of age, featuring in an array of provincial and national competitions up through her teens and 20s while also trialling for the Kiwi women’s team, known international as the Black Ferns.

Unfortunately, during this period, the then semi-professional player struggled with anorexia and her life took a different direction for a while. It was on this journey that she met her husband George.

“We are both from the South Island [in New Zealand]. He is from Christchurch and I am from North Otago but we met in Dunedin. Most of our friends are professional rugby players, wives or partners and they set us up. I was hosting a radio sports show at the time, so I knew of George anyway.”

Still, Naoupu, who has also worked as a TV sports presenter, has always retained an interest in sport and fitness and when her Black Fern friend Kathleen Wilton visited her last year, the Otago prop encouraged Naoupu to trail for the Ireland women’s sevens set-up.
She subsequently attended the series of talent identification camps being run and now hopes to secure a place in the development side when the cut is made later this month. “I have been enjoying the training,” says the New Zealand born Samoan.

“At the moment, I am getting George to train me, just for the camps. I wrote my own programme and he is just the one who times it!” laughs Naoupu, who has lined out on several occasions for Galwegians’ 15-a-side since moving to the West of Ireland. “I hope I make it now.”

Arguably, the disadvantage Naoupu has is her age, given that she will turn 30 when she qualifies to play for Ireland and will be going on 33 when rugby sevens as a sport makes its debut at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

That said, she does offer a wealth of experience while the benefits of her own personal regime – running fitness classes – has also helped her to keep in tip-top shape. “At the first camp for the Ireland women’s sevens, I realised I was one of the fastest ones but I am also one of the oldest ones! So, I surprised myself.

“I felt really good and that was huge for me because that came down to the [fitness] programme I had put together. At that time, those classes in Ocean Fitness were all I was doing. So, to convert what I was doing and preaching into that aspect of my own training was really pleasing.”

In itself, that is an endorsement of her own fitness programme, The Senshaper Series, which was launched in a number of Galway gyms, including Ocean Fitness, both NRGs, NUIG Kingfisher and Active Fitness, earlier this year.

For Naoupu’s part, she already had extensive experience in this area. In addition to holding a Sporting Performance Level V certification from the Sports Institute of Otago – along with pursuing further post-graduate and other courses, such as Sports Business Management – she has also worked as a group fitness instructor as part of the International Les Mills network.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.