Myrtle Muir
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dunedin, New Zealand
 | |||
| Personal information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Myrtle Violet Matilda Muir (Née: Seque) | ||
| Born |
1900 Dunedin, New Zealand | ||
| Died | 1966 (aged 65–66) | ||
| Spouse | Harold Douglas Muir | ||
| Coaching career | |||
| Years | Team(s) | ||
| 1938; 1948 | New Zealand | ||
Myrtle Muir (1900–1966)[1] was the first coach of the New Zealand national netball team in 1938. She was a founder of what would become Netball New Zealand, and served as its president from 1932 to 1949. Little was known about Muir's origins until 2020, when researchers discovered that she was descended from a Chinese settler who worked in the Otago goldfields.[2]
Myrtle Violet Matilda Muir (née Seque) was the daughter of Edward Seque and Honora Pine. Her father was the son of Wong See Kew (or Que), a Chinese settler who had gone to New Zealand to work in the Otago Gold Fields in 1868, settling in the town of Lawrence and later becoming a market gardener. He married Elizabeth Nesbitt who had been born in Tasmania when it was still a British penal colony. This was one of the first examples of marriage between Chinese men and New Zealand women of British descent and they had seven children. Edward, their eldest son, moved to Dunedin and changed See Que to Seque, enabling him to hide his Chinese ancestry.[2][3][4]
Muir attended the Otago Girls' High School (OGHS) in Dunedin. Ruth Fry suggests that the OGHS was the first place in New Zealand where netball was played, although this is disputed. It is, however, clear that the game was being played at the school by the time Muir enrolled, with school records confirming that she was there in 1915. In 1922 she married Harold Douglas Muir. As, according to the convention of the time, she then became Mrs. H. D. Muir, it was only in 2020 that researchers identified her first names. To other people, she was always just known as "Mrs. Muir".[2][4][5]