‘I never thought I could represent Hong Kong’: Po Leung Kuk’s Cathy Wong finds way out of foster care and into new life of rugby
- For 18-year-old Cathy Wong, rugby has become her way to a new life and the U19 player appears to be a star in the making
- The scrum half just returned from Japan where she meet fellow players from a variety of countries
For Hong Kong Rugby Union national team member Cathy Wong Sze-man, rugby is much more than a sport.
At the age of two, Wong was taken under the wing of Po Leung Kuk, a charity organisation that runs a number of schools and orphanages in Hong Kong, because her parents couldn’t afford to put her in school. Wong said when growing up, conversing with people was hard and finding her way alone was even harder.
“As a kid growing up, meeting people and talking with friends was hard,” said the 18-year-old who recently returned to live with her parents after being in the residential care home programme for 16 years. “I tried to play basketball, but I was too small. But I like to self-learn, I tried to skip rope and do exercises that would make me taller,” she said with a chuckle.
As it turned out, inside a shy young girl was a premier athlete just bursting to break out. Wong said there was one sport in particular that always caught her eye when she walked by the local fields.
“I didn’t know what rugby was when I was younger but I saw people playing it. They seemed genuinely happy, so I always wanted to try it.”