Basketball: Tauranga's Maka Daysh says New Zealand Women's Maori Basketball selection has been a welcome achievement

Maka Daysh says being selected for the New Zealand Women's Maori Basketball team has been a silver lining for her and her grandparents Terry Hunter, left, and Geraldine Hunter. Photo / Andrew Warner

After a tough few months, Tauranga-based basketballer Maka Daysh has something she is excited about.

The power forward, who returned home in 2017 from two years playing basketball for Chadron State University in Nebraska, has been selected for the New Zealand Maori Women's Basketball Team that will compete at the 2019 World Indigenous Basketball Championships in Wellington this month.

Selection for the tournament, which is scheduled for March 23-30 and hosted by New Zealand Maori Basketball Aotearoa, has come at the right time, she says.

Over the Christmas and New Year period Daysh says her "Poppy" Terry Hunter suffered a number of health complications. She says he underwent open heart surgery, recovering at Waikato Hospital. After only being home for 10 days, Maka says Terry then suffered a stroke.

Daysh, who lives in Ohauiti with her grandparents Terry and Geraldine Hunter on a dairy farm, says that time of the year was filled with a lot of worry for her family.

In order to make things as easy on her grandmother as possible, Daysh says she and her aunty took on the workload of the farm. It meant lots of early mornings and long days in order to juggle that task with her own commitments.

Daysh was also coaching basketball and was preparing for the National Maori Basketball Tournament in Rotorua in January, which she and her Te Maru o Mauao ki Tauranga Moana teammates won, taking out the 2019 NZ Māori Basketball Wahine Champions title.

From there, Daysh was selected for the New Zealand Maori Women's Basketball Team.

Daysh, who has played basketball at a national level many times, says this year her goal was to make the New Zealand Maori Women's team and it was no easy task.

Her days would start about 5am and would get home about 7pm because she knew she had goals to reach. Luckily, she had time off work, she says.

"My biggest goal was to make this, we've had a couple of hard times," Daysh says.

She says she and her family were given a lot of support from people in their community and she was thankful for everyone's efforts. Now that her Poppy was home and was in good health, Daysh says she is concentrating more on her next goal - which is the next competition in Wellington.

"We're going to training camp a couple of days before, everybody's fresh off nationals at the end of January."

The 185cm basketballer started playing the sport when she was 12 and with plenty of talent, she has been able to continue and progress in the sport.

"My mum used to play, I was always the tall kid."

Currently playing in the Women's Basketball Championship (WBC) for Waikato, Daysh has plenty to keep her busy in the sport. She also gives plenty back to the sport that has given her so much, coaching dozens of kids in teams around the city and encouraging young children, especially in the intermediate age group, to do their best.

"Basketball can be their outlet ... [I'd] like kids to see that."