Michael Bradley Photography
Parris Mason and Central Pulse coach Yvette McCausland-Durie deep in discussion during this year’s season.
Former New Plymouth Girls’ High School student Parris Mason is destined to represent New Zealand in two sports codes.
Already a promising netballer where Mason was part of the championship winning Central Pulse team in the ANZ Premiership this year and a New Zealand U21 representative, the 19-year-old has been named in the Tall Ferns basketball squad for an upcoming tour of Australia.
“It was definitely a surprise,” Mason said to One News on Wednesday.
“It’s always a privilege to be able to represent the country, so I’m super excited for it.”
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The squad will assemble in Melbourne on October 12 before playing four matches against Australian women’s national basketball teams the Southside Flyers, Melbourne Boomers and Bendigo Spirit twice.
“It’s pretty cool that I got selected for this campaign.”
Mason finished her Year 12 and 13 at Palmerston North’s Manukura School to chase her sporting dreams.
Playing multiple codes is nothing new for her after she represented New Zealand in basketball, netball and touch rugby at age-group levels.
Basketball NZ
A young Parris Mason played for New Zealand U17s at the 2019 FIBA Oceania championships, winning silver.
She was part of the New Zealand U17 basketball team that won silver at the 2019 FIBA Oceania Championships in New Caledonia.
It was her netball attributes, including being a 184cm in-circle defender and assisting the Tokomanawa Queens to this year’s Tauihi League (women’s basketball competition) title, that led her to selection.
Tall Ferns assistant coach Mel Downer said basketball and netball share similarities like seeing and using space and passing into it.
“Parris in particular does a really great job at that,” Downer said.
Mason told Newsroom in June being able to be involved in both sports is a big part of her life and would love to do both for as long as she can.
While she can juggle the two for now with the support from the Central Pulse, her future seems to be on the netball court.
“I would really love to have a good Pulse season, so after the Ferns campaign I’m just going to be very netball focused for a bit,” she said.
“But I definitely have basketball at the back of my mind knowing that it’s an opportunity to go to further events in basketball.”
If Mason represents New Zealand at netball, she will join Belinda Colling and Donna Wilkins, who were dual-internationals in both codes in the mid-1990s and early 2000s.
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