Feilding High's girls on the rise in the Manawatu heartland

Feilding High School has long been a heartland rugby name, and its girls are once again a team to watch in the Manawatu.

The latest sign came in June, when the school landed a player in a national squad. NZ Rugby named Feilding High's Lydiah Muyengwa-Cotton, a prop, in the South squad of its New Zealand Under-18 Girls' Pathways Squad, announced on 26 June 2026.

The pathways squads gather the country's most promising young players for development. NZ Rugby notes the South squad was drawn from schools and clubs within or south of the Whanganui, Hawke's Bay and Poverty Bay unions, including all of the South Island, which puts Manawatu firmly in that catchment. A call-up is recognition that a player is tracking with the best of her age group.

Around that individual honour, the wider programme has been busy too. Ahead of the season the school used its own official Facebook channel to announce its 2026 girls' rugby First XV squad, a public marker of a group being built for the year ahead.

The competition they step into is no soft landing. Feilding sits in the Hurricanes girls' grade alongside Manukura and St Mary's College, the two schools that contested the 2025 Hurricanes final. ClubRugby.nz reported Manukura beat St Mary's College 30-17 to retain the Rex Kerr Cup, a fifth straight title and their seventh in eight years.

That same report is a reminder of how much pedigree Feilding carries in this competition. ClubRugby.nz records that Feilding High School dominated the cup's early years, winning in 2007 and from 2009 to 2011, then taking four in a row from 2012 to 2015.

So the story here is a proud programme measuring itself against the best. Sharing a grade with the region's benchmark sides is exactly the kind of week-in, week-out test that grows players, and a pathways selection suggests the development work is landing.

For a school with this much history in the women's game, the question is a fun one to sit with. Can Feilding's girls climb back toward the top of a Hurricanes competition they once ruled? On the evidence of a national call-up and a freshly named squad, the foundations are being laid.

Either way, it is a good time to be following girls' rugby in the Manawatu.