Pietie Coetzee

Who is Pietie Coetzee?

Pietie Coetzee is a field hockey player from South Africa who was born in Bloemfontein. Nicknamed Pieta. she studied at the Rand Afrikaans University in Johannesburg, Gauteng, and represented her country at the 2000 and 2004 Summer Olympics.

A striker, Coetzee played club hockey with Amsterdam, Netherlands in the late 1990s. She made her international senior debut for the South African Women's Team in 1995 against Spain during the Atlanta Challenge Cup in Atlanta, Georgia. She was named the South African Hockey Player of the Year in 1997 and in 2002. Coetzee was the top goal scorer at the 2002 Women's Hockey World Cup held in Perth, Western Australia, where South Africa finished in 13th position. In 2007 she played briefly at NMHC Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Pietie Coetzee became the all-time leading goal scorer in women's international hockey on 21 June 2011 with the third of four goals she scored in a 5-5 draw against the United States in the Champions Challenge in Dublin. It took her to 221 goals, bettering the 20-year-old world record of Russia's Natalya Krasnikova.