She plays Lock for the Wallaroos and NSW Warratahs, is a presenter on Stan Sports, co-hosts a radio show and juggles a full time job – Meet Sera Naiqama!
We experience a day in her life as a high-performance athlete and she shares what it’s been like for her growing up in Australia as a Fijian woman.
MY WORLD explores the day-to-day hustle of extraordinary Pacific celebrities navigating their busy lives and making our community proud.
For more inspiring stories of Pacific women visit: https://www.thecoconet.tv/the-coconet
Right off the bat yeah i’m swinging for the fence got the home crowd loud gotta make em proud get em for the win get the dub get a top spot get a day fight hard got it online.
My name is Sera Naiqama we’re here at new south wales world house hq welcome to my world so i compete in the super w competition
it’s the premier women’s 15 comp here for rugby union what i love about this club is that there’s just such a rich history here um the girls that are here in this squad like they’re just such strong contenders and i really believe that i play with the best players in this country so um to me to be able to
play a small part in that and be able to don the jersey is something that is really special to me and like i have a lot of pride in like my family name as
well and i grew up adoring my brothers and the legacy that they created around our surname it feels cool to be able to contribute to that um under the new south wales banner
so when we get here to training um there’s a couple of things that we need to do and the first one is to go up and see our staff we’re having a coffee that’s never coming i know i’ll call you I’ll call you yup you’ve said that to me for four weeks now.
Being a semi-professional athlete is very hard work can you please strap my ankle i’m getting up my ankle straps um earlier this season i had a bit of a stressy through it and so i missed out on the opening two games of the season which was far from my deal
i started playing rugby in 2011 um i heard about rugby sevens being played at the olympics for the first time at the rio olympics and um my school went crazy trying to recruit talent so we could create a team and get involved and basically through a gala day i played my first sevens game went on to play new south wales school girls which was like their normal team and then basically after seven’s finished they said if you want to keep playing rugby you need to go find a 15s club because 15s happens all year round whereas seven is like quite specific to summer
representing australia at the osho in a tournament in fiji was really special i felt like it was quite a full circle moment i’m an australian born
fijian so being able to go back um to where my parents are from and where our bloodline runs from is really special and it’s quite emotional particularly the first time being able to put on the yellow jersey and seeing the anthem in fiji it was special and it’s a fun memory that i
hold on to quite closely there’s only one op to do testing one day
this is it welcome to health week bench chin up we just finished from gym testing so basically it was your max squat your max bench press as well as
your max chin ups um it’s been a while since we’ve done it so the girls are super pumped and probably heard them screaming a little bit because a couple of us got some pb
so hell week is off to a good start morning guys it’s now 6 30 in the morning every Thursday i come into the abc studio to record a radio podcast
called can you be more specific my co-host is dean hallitown he’s an absolute legend so let’s go upstairs and record this week’s show
they said play rugby it’ll be fun they said good morning crew meet somebody naka and welcome to another episode of can you be more
pacific
My name is Sera Naiqama as always i’m joined by my media bestie dean halatau my burst onto the media scene has really come about in the past 10 months abc offered me an opportunity to co-host a radio show with dean haletau.
But can you be more pacific and it was cool because i’d never had any experience in the space i said yes and basically on the back of that they extended me in a tv opportunity to host that pacific sports show which was cool.
I did that alongside to tough pilates now and then you know i just had my head down doing all my work with abc and channel nine caught a whiff of it and reached out to me asking if i’d be interested in doing the blood of slow game 3.
they said yes and i’m so grateful i did that on my debut i got to do it alongside sonny bill williams which is something i won’t be forgetting
anytime soon and basically from that they were quite impressed and have continued to offer me work so because of that exposure i’ve
been afforded everything else i’ve been given
well it’s now nine o’clock and i’m at my full-time job a struggle is real but struggle is so real trying to hold down the athlete life as well as a full-time
job but as you mentioned the women’s 15’s code here in australia is still a semi-professional sport which means we need to be able to hold full-time jobs or a job in order to support ourselves financially the juggling act is is pretty hard to be honest like you know you guys have been with me throughout last night and today like you see how late we train till how early my days start
i have to back it up the next day having to do or live this way for as long as i have which has been like the past five years um you just you just learn to hustle because at the end of the day you want to succeed as an athlete and you’ll make any sacrifices you need to to be able to achieve it my upbringing was definitely chaotic
but there was a lot of love in it my parents separated when i was quite young um but my siblings and i are quite close because of i guess the adversity
that we faced at a very young age but despite my parents differences there was a lot of love and i spent a lot of time actually with my bumble and my papa they had a heavy hand in bringing us all up and um yeah i’m just really grateful for them because i feel like life would have looked quite different without them
i love going back to Fiji it’s so special from the moment you land in the plane and you look around like everyone looks like you and it’s special you just have this strong sense of belonging and that’s definitely what i feel it’s also great to see family being a vision to me means absolutely everything it’s the core of my identity and you know when i think about what i was like quite younger and being able to own my fijian identity i probably didn’t feel like i could because i didn’t speak the mother tongue
but now that i’ve come into my own and i feel like i have such a deeper and stronger connection to my culture my identity is pivotal in my day-to-day
life and i think that now when i see the reflection of myself in the mirror i take so much pride in like the color of my skin the texture of my hair and it’s it screams i’m a fijian woman and like i’m i’m so proud of it so i feel like it’s been a journey being able to embrace my identity um but i couldn’t be prouder of where i am right now.
