From June 19 to July 2, one of the co-founders of the Wellington Wizards youth rugby club and two of the club’s original players traveled to New Zealand as part of the USA Rugby South Panthers U19 team’s tour to the South Pacific nation.
The co-founder is Mark Patterson, and the two original players are 15-year-old Cooper Patterson and 16-year-old Liam Ishizaki. Patterson is a rising sophomore at Park Vista High School, while Ishizaki is a rising junior at Seminole Ridge High School, where he plays as a running back on the school’s varsity football team.
The players on the U.S. squad were from Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Illinois and Pennsylvania. While Cooper Patterson and Ishizaki played for the Panthers, Mark Patterson, Cooper’s father, was one of the team’s assistant coaches.
This U.S. squad of 23 players and four coaches departed the U.S. on June 19 and arrived in Auckland, New Zealand, on June 21. While on tour, the young American rugby team spent nearly as much time sightseeing and traveling around New Zealand as they did practicing and playing rugby, where the sport is the national pastime.
After arriving in Auckland, which is located at the northern tip of New Zealand’s North Island, the Panthers traveled around the city, visited Sky Tower and toured Eden Park, the national rugby stadium where the New Zealand All Blacks, the national rugby team, plays many of its home matches each year. On their first full day in Auckland, they also attended one of the country’s major rugby events, held at Eden Park.
“We attended the Super Rugby Final between the Auckland Blues and the Hamilton Chiefs,” Mark Patterson said. “There were 44,000 fans in attendance. It was like their Super Bowl. The Blues won, 41-10. It was an amazing experience. Our players and coaches loved it.”
After spending three days in Auckland, the group traveled to Rotorua for one day, where they visited Kuirau Park and enjoyed a skyline gondola ride.
From Rotorua, they traveled by luxury coach to Wellington, which is New Zealand’s capital city. While in Wellington for three days, the Panthers toured the New Zealand Rugby Museum, dropped by the headquarters of New Zealand Rugby, and paid a visit to the Zealandia Wildlife Sanctuary.
After three days in Wellington, the young rugby tourists concluded their trip with five days in Christchurch, on New Zealand’s South Island. To get to Christchurch from Wellington, they traveled by an ocean-going ferry. While in Christchurch, they saw the seal colony at Kaikoura and toured the Willowbank Kiwi House.
On day five in Christchurch, the players and coaches boarded flights for the long trip back to the United States.
The rugby portion of the trip included a number of practice sessions with some of New Zealand’s top rugby coaches. They attended several top-flight rugby games and actually played two rugby games.
The Panthers’ first game was against a squad from Hutt Valley High School. It was the school’s equivalent of its junior varsity team. The Panthers won 26-7. In that game, Ishizaki played inside center, which is similar to being a running back in football, while Patterson played fullback, which is a position that requires you to run like a running back, tackle like a linebacker and catch the ball like a punt returner. In the game against Hutt Valley, Ishizaki scored a try, which is rugby’s equivalent of a touchdown in football.
Immediately prior to that game, the host team performed a Haka, the Māori cultural dance, for the visiting Americans. “It was awesome to see,” Mark Patterson said.
The second game was played against the second team from the Christchurch Boys’ High School. The Panthers prevailed again, 20-0. In that game, Ishizaki scored another try on a 50-yard breakaway score.
“The rugby coaches in New Zealand are very detail-oriented,” Mark Patterson said. “Those New Zealand rugby coaches break down every aspect of your play. They go so much deeper in their analysis of each player’s performance, which is why the national team — the All Blacks — is so good all the time. In one of our practices, we were instructed by two former All Blacks players.”
When most of the team boarded flights back to the U.S., Mark and Cooper Patterson stayed behind for a few extra days.
“We had three days of snowboarding at Cardrona Alpine Resort, which is the top-rated snow resort in the country,” Mark Patterson said. “There were no trees, and it was all white, fresh snow. We had lots of fun.”
As Mark Patterson reflects on his recent trip to New Zealand, he’s clearly looking forward to another visit to this hotbed of rugby.
“We got to see and play the best rugby on the planet, but the big surprise was the unmatched beauty of this country,” he said. “New Zealand is the most beautiful place on earth.”
