Black Ferns leader finds safe space in her struggles

Every September, Maia Roos and her high school rugby team-mates come together to celebrate the birthday of a player they lost too soon.
Roos was in Year 11 at Auckland’s Tāmaki College when one of her team-mates and friends took her own life. She makes no secret of the fact she struggled with the loss.
“There was like a stream of suicides throughout my school. So it was real heavy and scary, for a long time,” says Roos, who’d go on to become the youngest-ever Black Ferns captain.
“We really struggled with the what ifs – what if only we just talked to her more? Should I have been a better friend? We were so young, but we still felt like we could have done something.”
It was another Black Fern, Doris Taufateau – Roos’ rugby coach, teacher and school dean – who would guide her through the darkest times.
“Doris knew we were just kids, and what we were going through wasn’t normal. And that helped me so much growing up,” the 23-year-old lock forward and Blues co-captain says.
This year, the birthday celebration was a little different, with Roos enroute to England for the Black Ferns’ end-of-year northern tour.
“Her birthday was on our travel day, so we had a little online group chat, and sent photos with a birthday candle,” Roos says. But in an airport lounge, without a candle, Roos had to be inventive – with a rolled-up napkin stuck on a cupcake.
Her friend continues to be one of the biggest motivators in her rugby career, where she’s now played 27 tests, won a World Cup and captained the world champions at the tender age of 21. In the years since her friend’s death, Roos has built a web of people around her who she can reach out to if she’s struggling.  
“I have a really good base of support people around me, and I can reach out to my really close friends, and we talk it through. That’s easiest for me,” Roos says. “They know when I’m not feeling great. And if I’m not reaching out, they’ll ask me if I’m doing okay, then that opens the space for me to chat about it.”
That support network includes her close family – she’s of Cook Island Māori and American descent – who she checks in with every morning and night, no matter where she is in the world.
Now she wants to make sure rugby players – especially at the grassroots – have similar connections, through her role as an ambassador in New Zealand Rugby’s mental health and wellbeing programme, Mind Set Engage.
“Being able to deliver a programme that I think would have helped me as a young person is really cool,” Roos says.
She recalls a number of people coming to her school to talk to students about mental health. “But sometimes it just went in one ear and out the other, because we were like, ‘But it’s just happening so much’,” she says.
Roos found rugby was a safe space during her grief: “So it’s cool there’s a programme through rugby so young people, like I was, can look up to us and be like, ‘Oh I can reach out’.”
For Roos, that player to look up to was Taufateau – a Black Ferns prop who won the 2010 World Cup. A former Tāmaki College student, she’d had her fair share of troubles at school, until rugby helped turn her life around.
“Doris was also involved in the struggles we were having, and so she made sure that she facilitated a safe space for us,” says Roos. “It was okay to feel sad during class; it was okay to not want to participate in stuff sometimes. And she made sure we knew we could make it through, that we would feel better eventually.
“Her example has helped me to help other people; to not force conversations, but just provide a space where you feel you can take your mind off things.”
Roos would later play alongside Taufateau for a season in the Auckland Storm. Roos also returned to Tāmaki College and worked with Taufateau for a year, in her role as a ‘community angel’ – helping keep troubled students coming to school.
Roos is one of six ambassadors in the Mind Set Engage programme, joined by Black Ferns team-mate Katelyn Vaha’akolo and All Blacks Will Jordan and Anton Lienert-Brown.
“What’s cool is that we’re trying to take away the stigma about mental health in the rugby community, and really get the message out to the grassroots level of the game” Roos says. “I think that’s where we find a lot of struggle and limited resources to help people with mental health.”
The ambassadors are holding face-to-face workshops at schools and clubs across the country, helping players, coaches, rugby staff, volunteers and whānau to improve their own mental wellbeing and provide tools to help others.  
Roos has already been back to her old stomping ground at Tāmaki College, connecting with the senior girls’ rugby team. She feels there can be a lot of pressure on young rugby players.
“There’s pressure from your peers and from family, especially in communities like mine, to do well,” Roos says. “It might not be them putting heaps of pressure on you, but there’s the internal pressure of wanting to be great for them.”
Roos admits she felt the pressure when she became the Black Ferns captain against USA (the country where she was born), leading the team to their 2023 Pacific Four Series title.
“When I was first named captain, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I shouldn’t be doing this’. But now that I’m in the senior leadership group, and I’ve had time to grow up in this space, I just feel there’s so much support and we’re all on the same page together,” says Roos, who co-captained the Blues with Ruahei Demant to win this year’s Super Rugby Aupiki competition.
“I think it’s special as a younger person in the team, I see different perspectives than the older girls, and I make sure I bring my perspectives to the discussions, because they’re important.”