KEY POINTS:
A simple email can be the start of a relationship, get you fired from your job or earn you instant infamy. Now, it appears it can also win you a place on a national team.
It was the sending of an email that set American basketballer Clare Bodensteiner
on a whirlwind course that ended in her selection for the Tall Ferns.
The 23-year-old was born in Christchurch and lived there for nearly four years before her parents returned to the United States. A talented athlete, Bodensteiner went on to excel at basketball and played in the highly regarded Stanford University programme. There, her "exotic" birthplace was only ever mentioned as an interesting aside in her player profile.
Bodensteiner thought little of her New Zealand roots and never considered they could help further her career in basketball.
But after graduating from Stanford with a psychology major, Bodensteiner visited her Christchurch godparents and holidayed with friends in New Zealand in August.
She learned that she qualified for a New Zealand passport, but in the meantime headed to London where she taught at an American school and coached basketball.
Harbouring a desire to play professionally, she sent an email to the Basketball New Zealand website. What resulted Bodensteiner describes as "beyond my wildest dreams".
"I got on the Tall Ferns website and at the time I didn't realise it was an international team. I thought they would know who to contact about how to play professionally over here.
"So I just wrote an email - a to-whom-it-may-concern sort of thing - saying 'I'm interested in playing again. I have a dual passport ... ' and then [Tall Ferns coach] Mike McHugh emailed me back and told me about the Tall Ferns team."
From there "things just kind of snowballed" for the 1.75m shooting guard. Bodensteiner attended a Tall Ferns training camp in Australia at the beginning of last month and impressed McHugh enough to be included in the squad for the Good Luck Beijing tournament in China.
But the 23-year-old also had another surprise in store for McHugh. Bodensteiner had discovered her former team-mate at Stanford, Jillian Harmon, also had a Kiwi link, as her mother was a New Zealander.
"We were just catching up and she said 'you know, I think I have a New Zealand passport as well'. So I gave her Mike's number, and she gave him a call, and things sort of worked out."
Harmon also joined the Tall Ferns in China for last month's pre-Olympic shakedown, where New Zealand scored an historic win over world champions Australia.
Bodensteiner admits the significance of the win was initially lost on the American pair.
"My teammates kind of correlated it in American standards as like Canada beating the States ... and I thought 'oh God, okay it's really a big deal isn't it?'
"I didn't quite realise how dominant they had been, so to win was really cool."
McHugh said he could not believe his luck when he managed to snare one American College player, let alone two, for his programme.
"We're regularly on the lookout for players in the Australian League that will be eligible to play for New Zealand, but we don't really know what else is out there."
There are no guarantees the US players will be selected for the Olympics, though, with McHugh not finalising his squad for Beijing until after this month's tour to Europe.
But the possibility that she may not make the Olympics doesn't really worry Bodensteiner. For now, she's just happy to go along for the ride and be back playing basketball again.
"The girls are the best part for sure about this team. It's fun for me to be back in a team setting and to be able to play again and compete."
She admits her friends and family back home are bemused that she is suddenly off touring the world as an international basketballer.
"They don't really know what to think," she laughed. "I think they're all sort of like 'what's going on?' in the sense that it has all been such a whirlwind. None of us ever dreamed this would happen, but they're really excited and very, very supportive.
"They're definitely on the Tall Ferns website a lot more now."
Mike McHugh should brace himself for a flood of emails.
