Kaipo Olsen-Baker: the Gisborne point guard who became World Rugby Player of the Year

Rangitukia sits on the East Coast, just north of Tikitiki, in the country George Nepia called home for most of his life. It is where Kaipo Olsen-Baker's family comes from, and she likes to think the link runs deeper than geography. "I think I'm a distant relation to George Nepia," she told New Zealand Rugby in 2024, adding that everyone up the Coast says so. Two years later the No. 8 from Gisborne was named World Rugby Women's 15s Player of the Year, presented with the award on the field in Christchurch while still recovering from an ankle injury. In between came a debut try in the Tauranga rain, a foot injury that cost her a home World Cup, a move south and a season in which she scored in every round-robin game of Super Rugby Aupiki.

Gisborne, gymnastics and a basketball court

Kaipo Te Ariki Olsen-Baker was born in Gisborne on 1 May 2002. She is Ngāti Porou, with family roots in Rangitukia, and she grew up in Gisborne, where she went to Awapuni School and Gisborne Intermediate. Sport was everywhere. Her father played club rugby for the Pirates and Horouta clubs and her mother was a netballer for Gisborne and East Coast club sides. Her father died when she was one, and her mother raised the family. Kaipo and her two older sisters were all members of the Gisborne Gymnastics Club.

Rugby was not her first game. As a girl she played football in teams that included two future Black Ferns, Renee Holmes and Kelsey Teneti. The former Black Fern Trish Hina introduced her to rugby, but for a long time basketball came first. She was a point guard. "I started at the YMCA gym, where the games felt like street fights," she told Newsroom's Adam Julian in 2025. At 15, by Newsroom's account, she earned a trial with the Tall Ferns, and when she missed out on the New Zealand team she gave the sport away. "I wasn't used to disappointment," she said.

By then rugby had its hooks in. She spent three years with the Paikea Performance Academy in Gisborne, alongside her sisters, under coaches who included Hina, Amoe Tarsau and TK Moeke. She went to Gisborne Girls' High School and played for Poverty Bay under-18 and women's teams.

Manukura

In Year 12 she followed a friend to Palmerston North and applied to Manukura, a Māori sporting school. She was accepted, by Newsroom's account, to her complete surprise. "I really wanted to pursue rugby as my number one sport," she told the Gisborne Herald, looking back on the move.

At Manukura she played sevens and fifteens. New Zealand Rugby's profile remembers a standout schoolgirl with explosive power, strength over the ball and quick feet. The school's own website records that she was chosen for the New Zealand Condor Sevens team that went on to win the World Schools Aotearoa 7s Championship one December. By 2024 Manukura were the national secondary schools girls' champions.

Manawatū, as a schoolgirl

In 2019, still a Manukura student and aged 17, she was picked for the Manawatū Cyclones in the Farah Palmer Cup. She played four games that first season, three of them at No. 8, and five more in 2020, according to the provincial records kept at rugbyhistory.co.nz. That 2020 season also brought two games for the New Zealand Barbarians and a run off the bench for the Probables in a Black Ferns trial.

In Manawatū she came through the Feilding Old Boys-Oroua club, which by 2024 had produced three Black Ferns. In 2023 she, her sister Te Uarangi and a club team-mate went further: they founded and recruited the first women's team at the Freyberg Old Boys club in Palmerston North, to give young players somewhere to play. Te Uarangi, a hooker, captained the side through the regular season and Kaipo led it in the semi-finals. The sisters also played together for the Cyclones, something Kaipo said she had dreamed of since she was little.

Hurricanes Poua and the call-up

When Super Rugby Aupiki began in 2022, Olsen-Baker was in the Hurricanes Poua squad for the first season. Days after her 20th birthday she was named in Wayne Smith's Black Ferns squad for the first Pacific Four Series, and on 6 June 2022 she started at No. 8 against Australia at Tauranga Domain, with Ruahei Demant leading the side for the first time.

It poured. With the scores locked at 10-10, Olsen-Baker picked up off the back of a scrum and went 20 metres, brushing off three defenders, for the try that broke the deadlock. The Black Ferns won 23-10 and Campbell Burnes, writing for New Zealand Rugby, called her the outstanding player on the day. She was named player of the match. It was the first of a dozen Black Ferns wins that year.

"To this day I think about that try and go Wow," she told Adam Julian in 2024. She said she had never played in weather like it and that she does not think too much on the field. "I observe what's in front of me and react instinctively."

A week later she started again as Canada were beaten 28-0 at the Trusts Arena in Waitākere. She was one of two Black Ferns shown a yellow card that day.

The World Cup she missed

Then it went wrong. Olsen-Baker looked a certainty for the home World Cup, in Julian's words for New Zealand Rugby, until she was hurt at training. The Gisborne Herald later reported the injury as a third-degree tendon sprain in her right foot. She missed the O'Reilly Cup in August and the World Cup that followed, and watched as the Black Ferns beat England 34-31 in the final at Eden Park. She was out of rugby for more than a year.

"No one has ever seen me cry before," she told Newsroom. "It took me months of rehab to get it right."

She came back in 2023 with the Hurricanes Poua, then played a full Farah Palmer Cup season for Manawatū. The Cyclones beat every side on their way to the Championship final, then lost it 32-29 to Northland. Olsen-Baker led the competition in carries (113), defenders beaten (69) and offloads (26), scored five tries in seven games and was nominated for Farah Palmer Cup Player of the Year.

South to Matatū

On 17 November 2023 Matatū announced that Olsen-Baker was moving to Christchurch to join the defending Aupiki champions. Part of the draw was a reunion with head coach Whitney Hansen, whom she knew from the Black Ferns. "I'd describe my style of play as aggressive," Olsen-Baker said on signing, before adding that off the field she is "a complete softy."

Hansen was sure of what she was getting. "There really is no other 8 like her in the competition," she said.

In her first season in Christchurch Olsen-Baker ranked in the Aupiki top ten for carries (59), defenders beaten (19), metres (286) and offloads (9), and she was named Matatū's Player of the Year. In 2025 she scored four tries in seven games as Matatū reached the final at Eden Park. There she finished a 21-phase attack in the 55th minute to put Matatū 19-14 ahead, but the Blues came back to win 26-19.

Back in black

Allan Bunting named her in his Black Ferns squad in April 2024, almost two years after her second Test. "It means a lot to me to be back in the black jersey," she told the Gisborne Herald. "I'm more mature and determined this time around." Hina, her old coach, put it simply: "She was definitely one of the strongest ball-carriers in the Aupiki competition."

The return came off the bench in a 57-5 win over the USA in Hamilton on 11 May 2024. A week later she came on again in a 22-19 loss to Canada in Christchurch and made 16 carries. Then she started against Australia at North Harbour Stadium and, by Julian's count, made 27 carries and nine tackles and scored the opening try in a 67-19 win. Her family drove eight hours from Gisborne to watch. "Really emotional," she called it.

She started the rest of the year at No. 8: the 62-0 win over the Wallaroos at Ballymore, the 24-12 loss to England at Twickenham, and the WXV1 tournament in Canada, where she scored against England in a 49-31 defeat at Langley and against France in a 39-14 win in Vancouver.

At the New Zealand Rugby Awards in December 2024, aged 22, she was named Black Ferns Player of the Year. New Zealand Rugby's citation described "a bulldozing season in black". She was also a finalist for Aupiki Player of the Year, which went to Katelyn Vaha'akolo.

The 2025 World Cup

Olsen-Baker started the 2025 Pacific Four Series at No. 8, playing all 80 minutes of a 38-12 win over Australia in Newcastle, and was named for the World Cup in England. Her World Cup debut came off the bench against Spain in York on 24 August. Early in the second half, carrying from inside her own 22, she went down and was stretchered off with what was feared to be a broken ankle. She left the field in tears. She was later cleared of a fracture and stayed with the squad, but she missed the pool wins over Japan and Ireland.

She was back for the quarter-final against South Africa at Sandy Park in Exeter on 13 September, her first start of the tournament. South Africa held the Black Ferns to 10-10 at halftime with a forward-heavy, rolling-maul game. Early in the second half Olsen-Baker scored twice in quick succession, the first after her own charge from the 22 to halfway set up the attack, and she finished with a game-high 25 tackles by New Zealand Rugby's count. The Black Ferns won 46-17 and she was named player of the match.

She started the semi-final, lost 34-19 to Canada at Ashton Gate in Bristol, and the bronze final, won 42-26 against France at Twickenham. After the tournament she was named in World Rugby's Women's 15s Dream Team of the Year, and New Zealand Rugby records that she was the Rugby Players Association's Player of the Year for 2025.

2026: a try every week

Whitney Hansen was now Black Ferns head coach, and the 2026 Pacific Four Series went to North America and Australia. The Black Ferns beat the USA 48-15 in Sacramento, then Canada 36-14 in Kansas City, where Olsen-Baker scored twice. Newsroom's Julian singled out the second, a 70-metre run near full time that completed a 31-0 second half. A 40-5 win over Australia on the Sunshine Coast followed, and the Black Ferns kept the title.

On 2 June, with 19 Tests behind her, Olsen-Baker re-signed with New Zealand Rugby to the end of 2029. Hansen called her "an explosive, powerful loose forward with an incredible presence on the field" and said she had "a genuine ability to change a game". Olsen-Baker kept it short. "There's something special building within this group," she said, with a home Lions series and a World Cup in Australia ahead.

Back in Christchurch, she had her best try-scoring Aupiki season. She scored in every round-robin game for Matatū, finishing with eight tries in seven matches, and two of them came in the last regular-season game, a 38-29 loss to the Blues that still earned Matatū the bonus point to host the final. According to Newsroom she was the only player in the competition to pass 100 carries, with 108, and the top tackler with 136. The final, in front of more than 10,000 at One New Zealand Stadium, went to the Blues 28-21 with an 80th-minute try.

The rest of the Test season was interrupted by injury. She started in the 66-19 win over Australia at Mount Smart Stadium in August, then a shoulder injury kept her out of the historic Test in Johannesburg and the wins in Lyon and Edinburgh. She returned for the 26-19 loss to England at Twickenham. In Hamilton on 17 October she scored one of 13 tries as France were beaten 81-12. A week later in Whangārei, in the Black Ferns' 150th Test, she went down midway through the first half and was helped off. Hansen confirmed a high ankle sprain. "Fingers crossed she comes through this," the coach told Newstalk ZB.

Player of the Year

She was not playing when the Black Ferns beat France 36-7 in Christchurch on 31 October to finish a 10-win season. Afterwards, on the field, she was surprised with the news that she was World Rugby's Women's 15s Player of the Year, ahead of England's Zoe Harrison and Megan Jones and Canada's DaLeaka Menin. World Rugby cited her "powerful ball-carrying, athleticism and relentless work rate". Team-mate Elinor-Plum King took the Breakthrough Player award on the same night, and Olsen-Baker was the No. 8 in a Dream Team of the Year that included four other Black Ferns: Maiakawanakaulani Roos, Ayesha Leti-I'iga, Sylvia Brunt and Braxton Sorensen-McGee.

The award had been on her vision board, she told Newsroom. She talked about the "goats" who had won it before her, naming Sarah Hirini and Kendra Cocksedge, and about home. "The first thing that comes to mind is my beautiful mum," she said. "I just love rugby, I love the connections, I love this team." Newsroom's list of New Zealand winners before her runs from Monique Hirovanaa and Farah Palmer through Carla Hohepa, Cocksedge and Portia Woodman to Ruahei Demant in 2022.

Style and standing

Olsen-Baker's own description has not changed since the day she signed for Matatū: run hard, tackle hard. Her coaches use bigger words. Hansen has talked about her explosive speed and power since 2023, and in 2026 she spoke of a special legacy that was only beginning. The statistics run the same way: most carries in the 2023 Farah Palmer Cup, 27 carries in one Test against Australia, a game-high 25 tackles in a World Cup quarter-final, and top of the Aupiki charts for both carries and tackles in 2026.

Her advice to young players, given to the Gisborne Herald before the 2025 World Cup, was short. "Don't over-think it," she said. "Have fun and take every opportunity."

What is next

Olsen-Baker turns 25 in May 2027. The first job is getting the ankle right. After that the Black Ferns play the Wallaroos at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane on Anzac Day 2027, then host the British and Irish Lions Women in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch in September. Her New Zealand Rugby contract runs through the 2029 World Cup in Australia. The girl from Gisborne who quit basketball because she was not used to disappointment has made a habit of coming back.

Career at a glance

Provincial and Super Rugby figures are from rugbyhistory.co.nz to the end of 2025, with 2026 Aupiki figures from superrugby.co.nz and Newsroom. Test figures are from World Rugby's match records and New Zealand Rugby. Awards: Black Ferns Player of the Year 2024; Matatū Player of the Year 2024; World Rugby Dream Team 2025 and 2026; World Rugby Women's 15s Player of the Year 2026.