Arun Peter Panchia (born 22 April 1989) is a former New Zealand

field hockey Field hockey is a team sport structured in standard hockey format, in which each team plays with ten outfield players and a goalkeeper. Teams must drive a round hockey ball by hitting it with a hockey stick towards the rival team's shooting ci ...

player. He earned his first cap for the

New Zealand men's national field hockey team The New Zealand men's national field hockey team, also known as the Black Sticks Men, is the national team for men's field hockey of New Zealand, under the New Zealand Hockey Federation. At the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, they upset Austra ...

in 2009 against Pakistan and retired from international hockey in 2020.

Playing Career

Panchia's career spanned over eleven years amassing 287 international caps over his career, retiring as the fifth highest capped Men's Black Sticks player of all time. Panchia competed at the

2016 Summer Olympics The 2016 Summer Olympics ( pt, Jogos Olímpicos de Verão de 2016), officially the Games of the XXXI Olympiad ( pt, Jogos da XXXI Olimpíada) and also known as Rio 2016, was an international multi-sport event held from 5 to 21 August 20 ...

in Rio De Janeiro, where the team finished seventh. He also competed at three Commonwealth Games and three Hockey World Cups, winning two Commonwealth Games medals, earning bronze at the

2010 Commonwealth Games The 2010 Commonwealth Games (Hindi: 2010 राष्ट्रमण्डल खेल), officially known as the XIX Commonwealth Games and commonly known as Delhi 2010, was an international multi-sport event that was held in Delhi, India, f ...

in Delhi and silver at the

2018 Commonwealth Games The 2018 Commonwealth Games, officially known as the XXI Commonwealth Games and also known as Gold Coast 2018, was an international multi-sport event for members of the Commonwealth that were held on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, bet ...

in Gold Coast. Panchia plays as a defensive midfielder for Auckland in the

New Zealand National Hockey League The New Zealand National Hockey League, known also by the sponsored name Ford National Hockey League, was the New Zealand's national field hockey championship. The competition features players from New Zealand's national hockey teams, the Black ...

and played in the Netherlands for a season at SCHC. Due to his commitments to the national team, Panchia returned to New Zealand missing the second half of the season.

Personal Life

Panchia was born on 22 April 1989 in

Auckland Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The List of New Zealand urban areas by population, most populous urban area in the country and the List of cities in Oceania by po ...

to Peter and Ramila Panchia. Both his parents played field hockey at local level. Panchia's siblings are also field hockey players; he is the eldest of four who have played representative hockey. Jared Panchia, represented the national team and

Daniel Panchia Daniel is a masculine given name and a surname of Hebrew origin. It means "God is my judge"Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 68. (cf. Gabriel—"God is my strength" ...

has represented the national junior team. He has a younger sister, Anjali, who has also taken up the sport. The Panchia family have

Gujarati Gujarati may refer to: * something of, from, or related to Gujarat, a state of India * Gujarati people, the major ethnic group of Gujarat * Gujarati language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by them * Gujarati languages, the Western Indo-Aryan sub- ...

ancestry, with Panchia's great-grandfather emigrating from India to New Zealand in the 1920s.

References

External links