Cook Island's dual sports star and pilot Stephen Willis: Why flying a plane has similar challenges to sport
In an exclusive interview with Olympics.com ahead of the 2023 Pacific Games, the dual-international athlete reveals how he plans to make rugby the No.1 sport in the Cook Islands again.
Stephen Willis wants to put rugby sevens back on the map in the Cook Islands.
It used to be the most popular sport in the South Pacific nation, and the national team's captain fondly remembers playing for his local team Arorangi in the fierce inter-village derbies that brought communities together.
“The whole village would come to games and they got pretty intense! My village would turn up in numbers with all the mamas and papas, family and friends, coming to support and there was a huge hype around them," Willis told Olympics.com ahead of the 2023 Pacific Games in the Solomon Islands where he had the honour of being his country's flag bearer.
“People were die-hard for their village and there was so much heart on display. The matches were physical, and the tackles where huge!
“Since then, other sports have become more popular with the youth, so we are trying to encourage the younger ones to join in on the rugby field and get the sport back up there in the Cook Islands.”
Willis is a dual-sport international that has also represented the Cook Islands in football, who also works full-time as a pilot for national carrier Air Rarotonga.
Why rugby losing young players to football in the Cook Islands
Despite rugby sevens being Willis’ first love, it was in fact football that became his focus as a teenager.
In 2004, aged 16, he was offered a scholarship in the round-ball sport at the prestigious Auckland Grammar School in New Zealand.
“Rugby was always the dream before soccer, but the reality is that soccer is huge in every country in the world and of course it has a lot of money to pour into its youth.
“These days there are under-sixs, under-eights, under-tens and so on right the way through the age groups in the national soccer set up, and they’re taking most of the youth from rugby.
“I was given my first pair of boots by joining a youth soccer team at under 10s. So I went along to get a free pair of boots to play soccer and rugby in!
“Once I finished school, I was going to take a year off but my dad pushed me to pursue soccer."
The move was a good one and Willis went on to represent his nation at what was then called the South Pacific Games in 2007 in Samoa, which also served as the 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifier.
The team beat Tuvalu 4-1, but did not qualify for the knockouts after losing to Tahiti, New Caledonia, and Fiji to finish fourth in the group.
Stephen Willis: Full-time pilot and international rugby player
A year later in 2008, Willis decided to follow in his father’s and uncle’s footsteps - who still work at Air Rarotonga today - by enrolling at pilot school.
Despite working full-time on his new vocation, the athletic prodigy continued to play for the Arorangi Bears in rugby league and union ever since.
In 2017, he made his debut for the Cook Islands rugby sevens team at the Oceania Sevens Championship in Suva, Fiji.
After making it out of the groups courtesy of a 27-0 win over Nauru, the team were beaten 57-0 by reigning Olympic champions Fiji, meaning they had failed to qualify for the 2018 Hong Kong Sevens.
“Because we didn’t qualify, I played in Hong Kong for the Scottish Exiles team. Afterwards, I was sitting in the crowd in the famous South Stand with my cousins and we said to ourselves that next year, we will get on this field.
Stephen Willis played for the Scottish Exiles at the Hong Kong 10s in 2018. Later that year later he qualified with the Cook Islands to play at the Hong Kong Sevens.
“In 2018 we went back to Fiji for the qualifying matches and this time we made it to the Hong Kong Sevens.
“It was one of my favourite moments ever on the field because we had quite a few issues leading up to the match where we eventually qualified. A lightning storm caused our game against Tonga to be postponed by 45 minutes and we were told to wait in a tent. We went out to warm up, but lightning struck again and we had to go back in.
“The Tongan team knew that if we didn’t play, that they would qualify automatically because they qualified the year before, and they started celebrating with their music on. That fuelled up our boys, we said our prayers, and then the weather cleared and we took our opportunity with both hands and won the game! It was like a David and Goliath type story.”
Willis has remained in the team ever since and was part of the Cook Islands side that won three games and finished second in their group behind Fiji in the 2019 Pacific Games in Samoa, once again playing against several players that would go on to win another gold medal at the Tokyo 2020, before losing the bronze-medal match to Tonga 19-10.
The Cook Islans rugby union team qualified for the Hong Kong Sevens in 2019 and 2020, in what captain Stephen Willis called his favourite ever memory with the national team.
“I look up to Richie McCaw. His leadership, his captaincy of the All Blacks, and his amazing on and off field presence. He’s also a pilot himself these days!" - Stephen Willis to Olympics.com
Willis is a captain on and off the pitch. When not leading his men in rugby sevens matches, he is flying 34 and 15-seater commercial aircraft, as well as smaller corporate jets.
While flying and rugby wouldn’t seem to have many similarities at face value, Willis does draw parallels between leading his teams.
“The thing I love about flying, like in rugby, is that you have to take on different challenges every day,” he said.
“You wake up, the weather is not always the same, you have got things to deal with like grumpy passengers, so you have to adapt, find a way to succeed, and give your best no matter the circumstances.”
“There is a lot of responsibility that comes with being any type of captain, and I like to lead by example. However, I have to admit that sometimes I can be a bit too passionate on the rugby pitch and I have been awarded the odd yellow card and a couple of minutes in the sin-bin!”
It will come as little surprise to find out, therefore, that Willis’ main sporting inspiration is a New Zealand rugby legend that shares the same passions.
“I look up to Richie McCaw. His leadership, his captaincy of the All Blacks, and his amazing on and off field presence. He’s also a pilot himself these days, so I really look up to him.”
Cook Islands rugby captain Stephen Willis warms up at the 2023 Oceania Sevens Championship. The team used this tournament to prepare for the 2023 Pacific Games in the Solomon Islands.
Cook Islands flag bearer at the 2023 Pacific Games
The Cook Islands wanted to pay homage to locally-based athletes at the 2023 Pacific Games in the Solomon Islands.
For that reason, Willis and women’s rugby captain, Julieanne Westrupp, were chosen as the nation’s flag bearers at the Opening Ceremony.
“It's a great honour,” he said. “They normally select people from individual sports to be our flag bearers but this year they selected us from rugby sevens because we are born, raised and based now in the Cook Islands, rather than at a high-performance unity overseas.”
But after the Opening Ceremony it was down to business on the pitch.
There, Willis knows that great performances will be able to inspire his nation back home, and start to put rugby back, in his opinion, where it belongs.
“My why is just to motivate all the youth out there and get the young ones into sevens again. Be determined, put goals in place, and focus on them.
“I want to instil in the kids coming through that they must be humble, express themselves out on the field and make their ambitions come true.”