Rotorua's Anna Wong-Toi describes ultimate frisbee as a cross between American football and netball.
When she started playing the sport socially one-and-a-half years ago, she never imagined it would result in her representing her country overseas. But, next month she travels to Perth as part of New Zealand's under-24 UltimateWorld Championships women's team.
"It was a big surprise to be selected and a pleasant surprise to be honest," Wong-Toi said.
"I trialled for the under-24 team as an amateur and just for some experience - to test myself because I haven't been playing ultimate for that long.
"It was such a great feeling to be selected in the team."
She did not have high hopes for selection because she was only able to make one of two trials in Auckland.
"It was open invitation, anyone could trial, and they went through drills and skills, checking out how you could throw, how you went on offence and on defence, how quick you were - just analysing every aspect of our game.
"Representing New Zealand has happened so quickly, but it's such an honour to be able to play for my country. If I told myself a couple of years ago that I'd be representing New Zealand in a sport I wouldn't have expected it, especially one I haven't played for long. It's an awesome achievement and I'm representing Rotorua as well.
"It's a very underestimated sport in New Zealand, people see it as something you do in the park with your dog, they don't really see it as a competitive sport. I was the same initially, but I went and played and haven't stopped since."
Wong-Toi attends training weekends with the team once a month in Auckland.
"There's 20 of us in the team, 18 from Auckland then myself and one other from Christchurch. It is quite hard being away from the rest of the team, but the training camps we've had have really brought us all together. I've learnt so much myself as a player - ultimate in Auckland and the other bigger regions is a lot more developed.
The New Zealand Under-24 women's ultimate frisbee team gained valuable experience at the Under-22 Australian Ultimate Championships in Sydney last month. Photo / Supplied
"There are different types of players in ultimate. Traditionally you have handlers, who do a lot of the throwing with the disk, and receivers. I play down field, I'm a receiver so in terms of what skills you need in my position, you need to be quick on your feet, a lot of agility and being able to lose your marker.
"It's hugely based on team work, you can't have one person who is the star, everyone has to work together to be able to move the disk from one end to the other. I enjoy the social aspect as well, I've met a lot of people, including my partner, and it's just a really social and supportive sport."
The under-24 women's team went to Sydney last month to play as a guest in the under-22 Australian Ultimate Championships, which she said gave the team valuable playing time together.
"We were fortunate enough to come away with the tournament win, which was really cool. It was great to be able to play against some other people, with ultimate being such a small community you end up playing a lot of the same players all the time."
Ultimate frisbee does not receive any funding for overseas tournaments so Wong-Toi was delighted to be named a recipient of a BayTrust Scholarship last month.
The scholarship, awarded by Sport Bay of Plenty, BayTrust and the Acorn Foundation, is funded from contributions to Sport Bay of Plenty's CoachForce programme and will go towards her accommodation and travel for the event.
The under-24 Ultimate World Championships run from January 7-13 in Perth.
