North Force ace gets Junior Ferns dream start

Whangarei's Hannah Wilkinson has taken one step closer to making her dream reality.
The 17-year-old was named in the 20-strong Junior Ferns squad to contest the Oceania qualifying tournament, at Auckland, ahead of July's FIFA Under-20 Women's World Cup in Germany.
"It was pretty much 50/50 as to who would be picked - it was a very close decision but it came down to fitness as all the girls in the wider training squad were on the same skill level," the North Force Women and Kamo High School First XI representative said.
The sacrifices made over the Christmas period paid off, when she kept her spot in the national squad.
"I was very, very happy - it's definitely something I wanted and it's a dream come true."
Fellow North Force and Kamo High player Katie Rood was also selected in the wider training squad with Wilkinson after the pair were discovered at the national secondary schools tournament in September last year, but Rood narrowly missed out on making the tournament squad.
The Northern Advocate spoke to Wilkinson at Auckland's North Harbour Stadium, where she had just finished a training session with her new team, and was preparing for a friendly match against NZ's national women's senior squad, the Football Ferns.
"We [the squad] have been training very hard since New Year - focusing on fitness. We're just about there but have a little more work to do to get up to World Cup standard," she said.
Wilkinson has spent four days a week in Auckland for the past fortnight training and on Saturday will go into camp to prepare for the tournament, which gets underway on Thursday.
"It will be more of the same training and a chance to get to know each other - they are a great bunch," she said about her teammates.
New Zealand will go up against Tonga, Cook Islands and American Samoa in a series of matches over five-days during the tournament, from which the winner will claim the one and only World Cup spot allocated for the Oceania region.
It is an achievable goal for the talented side.
"We are looking pretty good for not having played much together. We played the Ferns [national women's team] last week as well and only went down by one goal," she said. Wilkinson will start the tournament as striker for the Junior Ferns, but if the team progresses to the World Cup, she could be making a switch.
"There wasn't enough time to learn the position but there is a possibility of me swapping to centre-back in the future."
While the nerves had started to rattle a little ahead of next week, Wilkinson said she was more excited than anything - that her dream of playing international football for NZ was about to come true.
Already a big year for Wilkinson, who graduated from Kamo High School last year and will start physiotherapy studies at Auckland University of Technology, 2010 has started with a bang. The bright spark was also offered a sport and tuition scholarship at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Denver, starting in August, which she is seriously considering, depending on what happens next week.

The OFC Under-20 Women's Championship runs from January 21-25, at North Harbour Stadium.