BASKETBALL - Sian, just 16, is aiming for the heights

While most teenage girls might spend their summer break at the beach or shopping, Sian Telfer's been pounding up and down the basketball court.
The 16-year-old from Maungatapere has made the New Zealand team for the Australian Youth Olympic Festival, and heads off on Saturday for the U18 tournament in Sydney.
The competition features 1800 athletes, aged 13-19, from all over the world in 20 different sports, giving them a taste of Olympic-style competition.
The four countries playing basketball are New Zealand, Australia, China and Japan.
Telfer picked the Aussies, their first opponents, to be their toughest, but said both China and Japan had strong teams and all games would be physical.
Her first taste of representative basketball came when she was just 12, when she was the youngest player to make the New Zealand Under-14 squad in 2004.
And now she is focused on her goal of getting a scholarship to an American university and playing college basketball.
So does she have a favourite player in the women's NBA?
"No, I don't even really watch it, it's boring!" she laughed.
"It's too slow ... the men's competition is faster."
Telfer begins Year 12 at Whangarei Girls' High School in a couple of weeks, but has yet to re-enrol, after spending last year at the TuToa Maori Sports Academy in Palmerston North playing her other sport of choice - netball.
There she trained under new Central Pulse and NZ U-21 coach Yvette McCausland-Durie, and did schoolwork by correspondence.
"It was full-on, we trained three times a day," she said. But there comes a time in any dual-code athlete's life when they have to make a choice between their sports, and Telfer is picking basketball.
She has got a busy year ahead of her, with Level 2 NCEA at school on top of huge basketball commitments. She is a member of the Tall Ferns Academy, after trialling and winning a spot among 30 girls from all over New Zealand.
The team will meet five times during the year and will show their skills to top New Zealand coaches, being trained up to the level needed to be considered for the Tall Ferns.
Netball won't be taking a backseat just yet though - she has been noticed by the Netball North development team, and will try out for the Girls' High senior team.
After hopefully winning a college scholarship, Telfer's future goals include making the Tall Ferns squad for the 2012 Olympics, and a WNBA contract in the States. She is the only player north of the Harbour Bridge to make the U-18 women's team.