Netball: Poi achieves NZ selection goal

Kimiora Poi was rewarded for determination with selection in the New Zealand Secondary Schools netball team.

Top marks for perseverance go to Hawke's Bay netballer Kimiora Poi.

The Napier Girls' High School midcourter missed the final cut when the New Zealand Secondary Schools team was named last year. It could have been easy for Poi, 17, to spit the dummy and focus on the other code, basketball, which she is equally as good at.

That's not her style. She persevered with the netball and did the work required to gain selection this year.

Poi will be the first Hawke's Bay player since Woodford House defender Charlotte Kight in 2006 and the first Napier Girls' High School player to play for the team when she takes the court at a four-team Trans Tasman Under-19 tournament in Rotorua next month.

"Being in Year 13 this year it was my last crack at making it. So it was pretty cool to get the nod," Poi said after the Julie Seymour-coached team was announced yesterday.

The 2014 Rob Guildford Memorial Trust scholarship recipient was full of praise for the work put in by the Bay's sole Netball New Zealand High Performance Coaching Programme mentor Charissa Barham in helping her tick the boxes required.

"Charissa helped me a lot and let me have access to her gym.

"Now I've made the final 12 the goal now is to earn a starting position. That will be a challenge as two of the midcourters, Mila Reuelu-Buchanan of Wellington and Alanis Toia-Tigafua of Auckland were in the team last year," Poi said.

Joining the New Zealand Secondary Schools team at the new-look tournament will be the Aotearoa Maori under-19 team and the Australia Gold and Green under-19 teams. Each team will play each other twice at the May 26-29 event.

"It has been designed with the aim of giving our secondary schools team a tougher standard of play. Against older players we will definitely get that," Poi said.

She has a Hawke's Bay under-19 team trial camp this weekend. Her first three-day training camp with the national team will be on May 8 and there will be another one before the tournament begins.

Hawke's Bay Netball's operations manager Tina Arlidge was delighted to hear of Poi's selection.

"We have all been following her journey very closely ... to get to this level has taken a lot of hard work and dedication from Kimi and her support team," Arlidge said.

"For netball in Hawke's Bay this is the boost we need to show the rest of the country, we do have the talent, we do have the players to make it all the way."

New Zealand Secondary Schools team

Shooters: Sysney Fraser, Amorangi Malesala (both St Kentigern College), Tiana Metuarau (Wellington East Girls' College), Maia Wilson (Mt Albert Grammar School).

Midcourters: Marcelle Parkes (Wellington East Girls' College), Kimiora Poi (Napier Girls' High School), Mila Reuelu-Buchanan (Wellington East Girls' College), Alanis Toia-Tigafua (Mt Albert Grammar School).

Defence: Caitlin Dowden (Mt Albert Grammar School), Courtney Elliott (Tai Wananga Ki Ruakura), Colleen Faleafaga (St Mary's College, Wellington), Holly Fowler (Mt Albert Grammar School)