Anita Punt
field hockey player
Anita McLaren (née Punt; born 2 October 1987) is a New Zealand field hockey player. She competed for the New Zealand women's national field hockey team (the Black Sticks Women) from 2009 to 2018, including for the team at the 2010 Commonwealth Games and the 2012 Summer Olympics.
Career
Born in Nelson to Nicolaas and Adele McLaren, Anita Punt is of Dutch descent through her father and holds dual New Zealand and Dutch citizenship. She attended Waimea College in nearby Richmond, before moving to Wellington at age 18 to focus on her hockey with the Capital National Hockey League team. McLaren was first selected for the Black Sticks Women in June 2009, along with ten other players as the Black Sticks squad was overhauled following its last place finish at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. She played her first match for New Zealand on 19 June 2009 against India in hometown Nelson. She helped New Zealand win a bronze medal at the 2014 Commonwealth Games, scoring the first goal in the bronze medal match.
McLaren has a reputation for her speed, being touted as one of the fastest female hockey players in the world with a time over ten metres ranking her within the top eight of the Black Sticks Men's squad. In February 2013, McLaren was entered as a wildcard entry into the annual International Track Meet in Christchurch, in which she won the 100 metres in 12.61 seconds (on a grass track and with a strong 2.9 m/s headwind), beating many seasoned New Zealand track athletes. She later won the 100 metres and 200 metres at the Porritt Classic in Hamilton, before competing in the New Zealand Track and Field Championships in March 2013 in Auckland.
“Anita Punt” enters the record as field hockey player. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Anita, Punt and field can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Anita Punt” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Anita, Punt and field provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4765617. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1987, 2009, 2018 and 2010.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Anita Punt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.