Westlake Girls' High put two into the national U18 squad as Auckland girls' rugby grows

Girls' rugby on the North Shore just picked up a national-level headline, and Westlake Girls' High School is right in the middle of it.

Two Westlake players, Mari-Lyn Connelly and Hadley Deed, were named in the North squad for New Zealand Rugby's U18 Girls' Pathways campaign. New Zealand Rugby announced the wider group on 26 June 2026, describing it as "the 50 players selected for the New Zealand U18s Girls' Pathways Squad camp in Hamilton from 5-10 July."

According to New Zealand Rugby, the players assembled for "a six-day high-performance campaign leading into the second edition of the North v South U18 fixture at St Peter's school in Cambridge," with the match livestreamed from midday on 9 July.

For a school programme, that is a meaningful moment. Two names from one First XV in a national squad of 50 says the pipeline at Westlake is doing something right, and it gives the rest of the squad a visible reason to keep turning up to training.

Westlake competes in the girls' First XV grade run by College Sport Auckland, the body that organises secondary school rugby across the region. Girls' rugby has been one of the fastest-growing parts of that competition in recent seasons, with more schools fielding teams and more players getting a genuine pathway from the school field toward representative honours.

That pathway is exactly what the U18 Girls' campaign is built to open up. A camp, a high-performance week, and a proper representative fixture give young players a taste of the level above school rugby without asking them to leave the school environment behind. For Connelly and Deed, it is a chance to test themselves against the best of their age group and bring that experience home to their teammates.

It also raises a fair question for the wider community: is this the moment girls' First XV rugby in Auckland steps up as a headline competition in its own right? The crowds, the livestreams and the national selections are all pointing the same way.

Whatever the answer, the direction of travel is clear. More girls are playing, more schools are backing them, and more of them are being seen at the national level. Westlake Girls' High School putting two into the North squad is a small, concrete sign of a scene that keeps getting bigger.

Here's to the rest of the season, and to the players coming up behind them.