Portia Woodman

Portia Woodman-Wickliffe (née Woodman; born 12 July 1991) is a New Zealand rugby union player.

She plays fifteen-a-side and seven-a-side rugby union, and is a member of the New Zealand women's national rugby sevens team and New Zealand women's national rugby union team.

Portia Woodman was born in Kawakawa on 12 July 1991 to Kathryn and Kawhena Woodman.

Both of her parents are teachers and named her after the heroine from their favourite play, The Merchant of Venice.

Woodman has two brothers Baden and Dalton.

Woodman came from a sporting background with both her father, Kawhena and her uncle, Fred Woodman being former All Blacks.

Her uncle Richard Woodman played for North Auckland.

Her mother Kathryn had ambitions of playing for the Silver Ferns, and was close to selection for the national team until she became pregnant at 16 with Woodman's eldest brother.

Her aunt Te Aroha Keenan is a former Silver Fern.

As a four-year-old she was fast enough to beat six-year-old girls in sprint races on family days at the local marae.

Her speed was noticed at school and she was encouraged into athletics.

When Woodman was nine, she watched a replay of Jonah Lomu on TV playing against the English team in the 1995 World Cup and proclaimed to her father that she wanted to be the female Jonah Lomu.

Her secondary education was undertaken at Mount Albert Grammar School where her aunt Te Aroha Keenan, was Deputy Principal and in charge of netball.

As rugby wasn't an option for girls at the school, the only other team option that interested her was netball.

She also had hopes of representing her country in athletics at the Olympics and participated in the sport from the age of 10 until she was approximately 17 years old.

This meant catching three buses from Mt Albert Grammar School to attend sprint training at AUT Millennium on the North Shore.

Over summer weekends Woodman will compete for Takapuna Athletics Club at athletic events.

Her early years were spent in Kaikohe before in 1997 the family relocated to Auckland.

The seven year old Woodman remembers being distraught at the move away from her familiar environment.

Her first after school activity was ballet and it wasn't until a year later that after hearing that she was a fast runner that the coach of a boys team asked her to join his rugby team.

This led to her being the only girl playing rugby at the Glenfield Rugby Union and Sports Club.

Encouraged by her mother she also played netball.

The highlight of her athletics career was competing in the 100 metres and triple jump at the New Zealand Secondary Schools Championships in 2008 and the North Island New Zealand Secondary Schools Championships in 2009.

By the time she was in her teens Woodman had come to the conclusion that she wasn't going to be fast enough to reach the Olympics but as she still loved athletics, she continued with it as she increasingly concentrated on netball.

She considered netball to be the only team sport which offered her best opportunity to play sport professionally.

She played in the Trans-Tasman Netball League and in 2011 was selected for the Netball New Zealand development squad.

Woodman's ability led to her being selected as a development player for the Northern Mystics before being joining their senior squad in 2012.

In 2012 the New Zealand Rugby Union organized a nationwide "Go for Gold" grassroots initiative to identify talent with the potential to represent New Zealand in the Sevens competition at the 2016 Summer Olympics, where rugby sevens was making its debut.

Woodman became aware of the initiative via an ad on Facebook which induced both Woodman and her friend Kayla McAlister at the Northern Mystics to attend a trial.

At the trial (which they attended without informing their coach) they were put through various fitness, rugby skill and character assessment activities.

Of the 800 who attended the trial, Woodman and McAlister were among the 30 deemed promising who attended a training camp at Waiouru in mid-2012.

Woodman discovered an immediate synergy with the game.

Looking back, Woodman has commented that athletics gave her the ability to run efficiently, while netball gave her the footwork and the hand-eye coordination skills to catch and run.

With the permission of the CEO of the Northern Mystics, Woodman and McAlister were allowed to play both netball and rugby.

Woodman's initial contract to play for the sevens paid her $20,000 a year.

To bring in additional income Woodman would train between 5:30 and 7:30 in the morning before working as a teacher's aide at a childcare centre before doing more training in the evening.

At her sevens International debut at the 2012 Oceania Women's Sevens Championship in Fiji she broke her shoulder in her very first game, as she didn't know how to tackle correctly and a woman Woodman tackled landed on top of her.

She was however able to continue to play in the rest of the games at the tournament.

Woodman was a member of the New Zealand Women's Sevens team that won a gold medal at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

In 2022, Woodman became the first woman to score 200 tries in the Sevens Series.