Inspirational Kiwi Ferns hooker Krystal Rota’s sacrifice for family and footy
Krystal Rota with her daughter Nikayla in hospital.Source: Supplied
Nathan Ryan
May 4th, 2017 6:00 am
PICTURE this. You’re a single parent to a nine-year-old son and three-year-old daughter.
You train five days a week and play rugby league on weekends.
As a semi-professional, you need to maintain a strict diet and fitness regimen because in a few months, you’ll be playing footy in front of 20,000-plus fans (but you’ll be paid nothing for putting your body through 80 minutes of punishment).
Your daughter’s sick. Really sick and spends the next couple of months in and out of hospital.
You’re juggling training commitments, schooling for your son, specialist visits with your daughter and you’re studying via correspondence.
To keep the cards stacked against you, you’ve recently lost your biggest supporter, your mum.
The struggles get deeper but we’ll get to them shortly. Already, this level of adversity would be more than enough of an excuse for most people to hang up the boots.
But not for
Krystal Rota. This is Krystal and this is why her story is important.
A proud Maori woman, Krystal is a dedicated and loving mother but also an elite rugby league player; the star No.9 for the Kiwi Ferns.
What makes her role in the New Zealand spine even more remarkable is the extremely limited amount of time she’s been able to spend with the squad due to her daughter Nikayla’s condition.
Nikayla has nephrotic syndrome, “the same condition as Jonah Lomu”.
“I tend to tell people that because a lot of people know what he had,” says Krystal.
Recently the three-year-old needed a kidney transplant. Nikayla’s father donated his but Nikayla’s little body struggles with an adult kidney so she needs a tube in her tummy, attached to a water pump.
“It’s been a struggle,” Krystal admits.
“We’re in and out of hospital on a weekly basis getting blood tests (and blood transfusions) and she’s on a strict medication regimen and water machine.
“We have to lug it around with us because she has an adult kidney. She needs it to be hydrated. It pumps water through a tube in her tummy.
“It’s a lot of hard work trying to juggle my daughter, plus my son (La-Ricco), who’s nine, who plays sports and is at school.
“That’s my struggle with day-to-day life and trying to fit footy in. I only really have my stepmum who is confident enough with her medications and water pump, so I rely on her a lot to look after my daughter so I can make it to training and games.”
As a single mother raising two kids with the assistance of her father and stepmother, Krystal was forced to quit her job of 11 years with Blue Bird foods.
Nikayla has no immune system and can’t be put in daycare, so Krystal is her full-time carer.
As a result, she’s in the process of starting a home beauty business and still, she plays and trains. Some of her sessions, though, are a little unorthodox.
So time-poor, Krystal started taking her boots to hospital and when her daughter dozed off to sleep, she’d slip on the studs and out to the Auckland Domain next door.
“We were living in (hospital) for several months at one stage and I wanted to maintain playing footy, so I used to train at the park next to the hospital,” Krystal explained.
“They have a big domain next to the Auckland children’s hospital and I would train there when she was asleep. I’d get the nurses to call me if she woke up and cut my training short.”
Her inner drive is unrivalled. Determined to set an example for her children, to not only chase their dreams but live them out, is what fuels her.
With the support of her teammates, coaching staff and immediate family, somehow she makes it work.
“I’ve never wanted to give up but at times it’s felt like it’s almost impossible to continue,” she admitted.
Such as this, just before the Auckland Nines this year.
“We went in for a blood test the week before going into Nines camp and we were admitted that day.
“My daughter was in hospital during the Nines.
“Weeks like that makes it extremely hard. I don’t want to be away from her, so I went into camp for the Nines late.”
She broke her wrist during the tournament. Not that it fazed her.
Krystal’s efforts to juggle life as a Kiwi international are nothing short of extraordinary but adversity is something she’s faced since she was a little girl.
Having caught the rugby league bug as an adolescent, she’s had to fight back against tradition to play the game she loved.
“It was frowned upon by my aunties for a woman to play rugby league, because they believed it was a man’s game,” she explained.
“My dad’s my biggest supporter and told me to follow my heart and do what I love.
“It’s funny, I wasn’t very popular prior (to making it) but all the people who frowned upon it now love it.”
In fact, the only time she stopped playing was when her mother Christine was battling cancer.
Like she is doing for her daughter now, in 2012 she was looking after her mum. That was a battle they couldn’t win.
“That was one of the biggest struggles of my life,” she said of losing her mother. “I took a break for about two and a half years, because I had to nurse my mum.
“I played footy in between but I didn’t fully commit and train often. I’ve been back for two years now.”
Having recently received the ‘League 4 Life’ grant after some encouragement from Sir Peter Leitch, better known as the Mad Butcher, Krystal’s parking and mileage for hospital trips are now covered.
She turns 32 in October and with the Rugby League World Cup at the end of the year, Krystal is more focused than ever.
So determined to make the side, she’s training five days a week (two days at club level and three with the Test team) and convinced her father, Roger, to take a break from coaching the Manurewa Marlins to help her at home.
“Now that I’m so full-on with footy, dad’s going to be helping with my daughter. With the World Cup this year, they all know how much commitment it’s going to take,” she said.
Incredible sacrifice for child and Kiwi jersey
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