Ardie Savea’s story contains a certain irony that is rarely discussed outside of New Zealand rugby circles. The man who would go on to win World Rugby Player of the Year never entered a lecture hall at a university. The day he left Rongotai College in Wellington, an all-boys institution nestled in the hills above the harbor, where he had completed his last year as captain of the First XV and head prefect, marked the end of his formal education.
That is not insignificant. Schools assign head prefects to students they believe will set an example for everyone, not just those who can work hard. Savea’s apparent proficiency in both roles at the same time suggests that he was wired even as a teenager.
The part that most people skip over is what happened next. Rather than enrolling somewhere, he signed with the Hurricanes at the age of eighteen and immediately entered professional sevens and Super Rugby. Looking back, he claims that he was essentially drawn into the working world as soon as he graduated from college and never found the time to return. Ten years passed. Just training, travel, and the gradual process of developing a career under intense public scrutiny—no lectures, tests, or campus life.
It’s easy to present that as a talent-for-tuition trade-off, and in a limited sense, it was. Savea, however, does not discuss it as a sacrifice. In discussions about his career, he has instead highlighted the lessons he learned from older Pacific Island players in those early Wellington and Hurricanes locker rooms, such as Ma’a Nonu and Victor Vito, who seem to have spent as much time discussing money and property as rugby. Even if no diploma is given for it, that is its own curriculum.
What he’s done with that gap since is where this becomes more intriguing. A few years ago, Savea worked with Toyota and a dealership in Wellington to start a leadership program for high school students in the area. He trained a small group of students under his supervision each year and concluded the program with a scholarship bearing his name. Not all of the students who experience it are the top athletes at their schools. They are chosen for something more in line with character, the kind of all-around motivation he claims he wishes someone had recognized him sooner.
Since then, he has expanded on that with ASAV Academy, an online initiative that provides training exercises and conditioning sessions to anyone who is willing to sign up. It seems like an extension of the same instinct: if formal education wasn’t a part of his path, he seems determined to create unofficial versions for other children.
The way he presents all of this is almost antiquated; it is more about who taught you and what stuck than it is about credentials. He has publicly stated that he wants to become fluent in Samoan, in part so that he can communicate effectively with his own parents. This shows that he is aware that a person can fall behind on more than one type of education.
It’s difficult to say whether any of this alters people’s perceptions of the conventional route from education to college to employment. However, the conventional narrative about what constitutes an education is complicated when a World Player of the Year builds scholarships rather than earning degrees.
