Jenny-May with her parents Paddy and Waka Coffin in the UK after her Silver Ferns debut.
All roads lead back home to King Country for Jenny-May Clarkson.
The 51-year-old morning breakfast television presenter was born in Te Kūiti and grew up in Piopio, the youngest of six in the Coffin family.
Despite living less than 100 metres from Mōkau Kohunui, the local marae, she did not learn Māori until many years later.
In her autobiography Full Circle, Clarkson confronts the personal tragedies that shaped her life – the death of her brother Charles from meningitis when she was six and losing her brother Jeff to bowel cancer followed by her father Waka’s death from a heart attack months later.
“My hometown, Piopio, is a small and beautiful little cluster of shops and houses sitting about halfway between Te Kūiti and the eastern coast of Te Ika-a-Māui, with State Highway 3 running right through the middle,” she writes in the book.
“When I was a kid, the town’s main strip featured a good old town hall – where all the important functions were held, including my debutante ball and my brother David’s wedding – the RSA, the Cossie Club, the dairy, the post office and phone exchange, a bookshop, a clothes shop, a butcher, the voluntary fire brigade. You know, just a little New Zealand farming town.”
When sorting through scrapbooks heaving with articles and photos, Clarkson realised she had forgotten many incidences in her life, from her King Country roots to representing her country from the centre circle and broadcasting into the circular eye of the camera.
She embarked on the next chapter in her life, one that would take her ‘Full Circle’, a play on netball and a position she made her own in the centre circle.
“Me, age 10, short dark hair sticking up at the front, white T-shirt, smiling confidently at the camera. And my immediate thought is: Who is that girl?’
“I remember her but I don’t recognise myself in her. She was so determined. Always marched right past the Cloverleaf Dairy, which her parents managed, on her way to school, never sparing a glance to the side and definitely not behind her.”
She shares a cultural journey too. From her Coffin lineage (well known in the Waikato and King Country) and Ngāti Maniapoto and Ngāti Kahu descent she reconnected with her heritage by taking a year-long Māori immersion class years later. Last year she added a moko kauae (traditional tattoo) to her chin despite fearing it might have an impact on her television career.
Whānau and identity run through her story, from her early years with her parents, brothers and sisters, through to the addition of her husband Dean, their twin sons and her two stepdaughters.
Clarkson was in the police in Hamilton when she first made the Silver Ferns in 1997. She was vice-captain in 2001, represented them at the 2002 Commonwealth Games and won 26 caps before retiring from international netball at the end of that year.
Her broadcasting career began in Hamilton on Classic Hits with radio legend Ronny Phillips and took her in 2005 to Auckland where she fronted sports news, netball commentary and latterly breakfast TV.
