Kia Ora, I am Carly and I come from a small town called Reporoa. During my primary years I went to Broadlands School and did my intermediate years at Reporoa College. At 17 years old I am now in my last year of high school at Rotorua Girls High. My story is all about basketball and small town life.
This year has and will have been a huge year for me. One of my proudest achievements I was able to do this year when I traveled across the world to play basketball for the NZ U17 Women’s Team.
At first I was listed as a reserve but was lucky enough to get a call up 5 days before the team was set to depart. The two pinnacle events being the U16 FIBA Asia Women’s Championship 2022 in Amman, Jordan and the U17 FIBA Women’s World Cup 2022 held in Debrecen, Hungary.
In school I have endorsed NCEA Level 1 and 2 with excellence and I am on the way to endorsing Level 3 with the same.
This year I am Deputy Head Girl of my kura and I am captain of my school basketball team. I think coming from a small town made me realize how much harder you have to work to get something you want.
For some reason it seems difficult to make something of yourself when you’ve lived and grown up in a small town.
I see myself now and wonder what may have happened if I had stayed and whether or not I would still have the same goals and aspirations. I have still loved my small rural town and the lessons it has shown to me.
My home taught me how to work hard and be resilient. Throughout my life my family has always been a huge contribution towards my successes.
My Mum sacrificed a lot of her time to take me to training after training and all of my parents supplied me with unconditional support, not to mention the amount of money they put in for me to be able to have each experience. I can truly say I was blessed.
"To me, success is about the individual and what they want to achieve. This word can mean something different for everyone and it is not dependent on the size of the achievement. For me, success is something you receive after hard work and dedication, it is something you work towards."
There is no real criteria for success and I believe it is only a feeling that can come from you. Only you know what success looks like and it is important that we remember only you are able to achieve your own success.
If I was to give advice to my younger self I would tell her to keep working for everything you want, there will be bad days but you just have to let them pass. I would tell her that everything you are doing is for a reason and these things are only temporary. As a child I would have wanted to hear everything that worked for me and now, looking back I can see how much hard work truly pays off.