Recent student Emma Hoskins features as New Zealand excels at the U21 Korfball World Championship

After finding korfball in Year Nine at St Margarets College, Emma Hoskins has gone on to represent New Zealand, playing a big part in an exceptional team performance, helping the team achieve an unprecedented ranking at the U21 World Korfball Championships in Malaysia last week, just missing out on a medal to finish fourth.

Serving as the 2025 Head of Korfball while in Year 13 at St Margarets, Emma loves giving back. Wearing the silver fern, her ‘team first’ attitude paid big dividends, as she frequently came off the bench to make a decisive impact in key matches.

At the 16-team tournament, New Zealand had a tough start in a pool game against favourites and eventual champions the Netherlands.

Bouncing back from that, New Zealand comfortably won the next two matches, over India and Hong Kong. Against the latter, after Emma came into the game with 13 minutes remaining, Hong Kong stopped scoring, while New Zealand kept the goals coming steadily to secure a place in the top eight, already guaranteeing a better overall ranking than the tenth place they managed at the same tournament two years ago.

Before this tournament New Zealand had never won an international korfball game at any level against any of the established European countries. Over two days the team rewrote that record. First they achieved a narrow win over England, with Emma scoring what turned out to be the winning goal. Next up they came from behind after trailing for three quarters of their match against Germany, before cruising away at the end to finish comfortably ahead, which took them through to the top four.

After the Netherlands, Belgium and Chinese Taipei have been the next two best in international korfball for at least the last 15 years. New Zealand played each of them in the last two games, first a semi-final against Belgium, then a bronze medal match against Chinese Taipei.

Korfball NZ chair Craig Matheson says the team’s final placing was a fantastic achievement.

“Although Belgium and Chinese Taipei remain ahead of us for now, we fought all the way, and fourth place was a massive achievement, when before this tournament New Zealand was ranked number eleven by the International Korfball Federation.”

School korfball in Canterbury is run by Mixx. Sign-ups for the Term Four school teams, playing on Friday evenings, will open soon. Contact Mrs Borrink: nicole.borrink@stmargarets.school.nz.