First-Ever SA Schools Girls Coaches Natasha Hofmeester and Zolisa Noxeke Speak Up
South African women’s rugby has handed two of its own pioneers the task of building something that has never existed before. Natasha Hofmeester and Zolisa Noxeke, both former Springbok Women, have been appointed the first head coaches of the new SA Schools Girls teams, the senior side and the ‘A’ side respectively, after SA Rugby’s National Teams Committee ratified the appointments on Tuesday, 2 June 2026.
Hofmeester takes charge of the primary SA Schools Girls team, assisted by Catherine Lowane, while Noxeke leads the SA Schools Girls ‘A’ team alongside fellow former Springbok Nosipho Poswa. Both squads take the field for the first time after the FNB U18 Girls Week in Gqeberha next month, where the coaches will pick the players who wear the jersey first.
For both women, this is the latest turn in a long road through the game. Hofmeester has now seen the national set-up as a player, as a manager and as a head coach, and each vantage point has carried her closer to where she wants to be.
“I think I found my feet,” Hofmeester said. “Yes, I started out as a player and then into management, but then I realised that I actually want to be a coach, and I’m still learning every day as a coach, and I think I can give back more to the sport, to the country by being a coach.”
“I think because I played for South Africa, I always feel like I want to give back more and I’m not done with representing South Africa, and playing the game, managing the game and now coaching the game is all part of the proudness I have for this country and the willingness.”
Inaugural SA Schools Girls Rugby Team Head Coach, Natasha Hofmeester
Noxeke’s road is just as long. Twenty years ago she pulled on the green and gold in the earliest days of the Springbok Women, when the players had almost nothing behind them, and this month she steps to the other side of the game.
“I am so excited, first of all, playing the game, knowing the pressure, knowing the standards – I’m looking forward to be there to represent everyone, women, that is out there.”
Inaugural SA Schools Girls Rugby ‘A’ Team Head Coach, Zolisa Noxeke
Noxeke, from Mdantsane in the Eastern Cape, was part of the side that played its first Test in 2004 and went to the World Cup in Canada in 2006. “I remember when we first played. We were so excited,” she said. “We were the first to play rugby. So it was very tough.”
Hofmeester first appeared in gsport’s pages in 2007, when she was honoured as the SA Rugby Women’s Achiever of the Year, and stepped into national leadership in 2019 as manager of the South African Women’s U20 side. That appointment came in the same announcement that made her former Western Province team-mate Laurian Johannes-Haupt the first female national coach in the country.
Both coaches want to give young players the start they did not have. Hofmeester points to her 2019 U20 side, many of whom have since reached the senior squad, as proof of what patient development delivers.
“With that team, because again, it was a junior team and for me, I think it was just letting, if you look at the senior squad now, a lot of those girls, they were in that junior squad in 2019,” Hofmeester said.
“And if I look at it now, I can say that I had a hand in that. I was part of their development in playing for the seniors and that is exactly what I want to do with the SA Schools Girls now. I want to sit back in a couple years time and also say that I had a hand in developing young players into the senior squad and I think that is my main goal to get these girls to top level and play the best rugby that they can for South Africa.”
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For Noxeke, two decades on, the wish for her schoolgirls is the head start she never had. “I would love to see that they have opportunity because they are starting playing rugby at the early age so that they can grow up being better players.”
She built her coaching in the rugby-rich Border region rather than in the better-resourced unions, and the work has been its own reward. “It’s not about coaching girls, it’s about showing them what discipline and giving them the opportunity to play the game,” she said. The years inside the Border junior women’s structures have only deepened her conviction. “So women’s rugby is growing. So that is why I’m in the system.”
Both appointments flow from the same deliberate push by SA Rugby to put more accredited women coaches at the top of the game. In February the two were among 24 women selected for the union’s first Women Coaches’ Transitioning Workshop under the Destination 2027 strategy. Hofmeester says the programme gave former players the confidence to step onto the touchline. For Noxeke, the room itself mattered as much as the curriculum.
“Most of the time when we are going to the workshop, we’ve been combined with the guys. But it was the first time that it was only the females only,” Noxeke said. “They keep on empowering us so that we can become a better coaches.”
That sense of carrying others runs through both coaches. Noxeke now leads the ‘A’ side with Poswa, a team-mate from that first World Cup, and feels the weight of it.
“I’m not representing myself. I represent every female coach in the world out there,” she said. “And I know it’s our time to step up and fill our space in this game.”
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The appointment lands in Youth Month, and Hofmeester is clear about the message she wants it to send to the next generation watching two women take charge of national teams.
“It’s important for a young girl to realise that equal opportunities are there for boys and girls,” Hofmeester said. “This platform is not just for boys but also for girls as well. I want a girl to see that hard work will pay off and just keep on working hard, keep on believing and just do what you can do if you want to reach the top and that’s exactly what I did. So if it is a young girl that’s going to watch me I want her to see that, you know, good work, hard work, patience is going to keep you going, it’s going to take you to the top.”
Neither coach measures the coming debut by the scoreboard. Noxeke says the first outing in Gqeberha is about something larger. “It’s to show the world that girls can play, even in a younger age, and to show out there that we as female coaches, we can handle all the stuff that we’ve been through.”
For Hofmeester, what she hopes to leave with this first group reaches beyond results. “I would like to believe that I taught them to be a team player,” she said. “I want them to realise that I taught them how to be united and have a sisterhood, and that your teammate is not just your teammate but your teammate is also your family away from home, because if you’re going to join a senior team and you’re going to travel for weeks, that’s your family.”
“You need to love each other, respect each other, and always try to bring out the best out of each other because your teammate is going to be your family out on the road.”
Asked what she hopes those same players will say of her in twenty years, Noxeke’s answer came in a single word, said twice. “Hope. Only hope.”
Main Photo Caption: Natasha Hofmeester (pictured) and Zolisa Noxeke have been named the first head coaches of the new SA Schools Girls teams, leading the senior and ‘A’ sides into their debut at the FNB U18 Girls Week in Gqeberha next month, following the ratification of their appointments by SA Rugby on Tuesday, 2 June 2026. All Photos: Supplied
Photo 2 Caption: Former Springbok Women’s player Zolisa Noxeke leads the SA Schools Girls ‘A’ side alongside Nosipho Poswa.
Photo 3 Caption: Natasha Hofmeester takes charge of the first SA Schools Girls team, assisted by Catherine Lowane.
Photo 4 Caption: Former Springbok Women pioneers Hofmeester and Noxeke are tasked with making history with the inaugural SA Schools Girls teams.
Crédito: Link de origem