Selection in Ferns a good call

When national teams are being selected, you either get a good news call or a bad news call.

For the Silver Ferns squad for the Commonwealth Games, those calls were made on Wednesday, and for two of the 12 players selected, they came as quite the surprise.

Uncapped defender Michaela Sokolich-beatson was sitting in a classroom as part of her training to become a teacher when she got the call, and said the lesson was ‘‘all a bit of a blur’’ after she spoke to coach Janine Southby.

‘‘I knew the team was being announced, but I never thought in my wildest thoughts that I’d be a part of the team,’’ she said.

The 21-year-old’s selection was still sinking in yesterday, where she revealed she hadn’t yet discussed her role with Southby.

‘‘We didn’t really go into details of that, to be honest,’’ said Sokolich-beatson

‘‘It was more me crying and saying ‘are you sure?’ than her explaining that stuff to me.’’

Sokolich-beatson has impressed for the Northern Mystics, and her callup may have come sooner, had she not been sidelined with a back injury at the end of last year.

Her debut will likely come next month in the Taini Jamison Trophy, which involves Fiji, Jamaica and Malawi, and when she gets out on court, she’s just going to take things as they come.

‘‘I try not to over-think when I go out there, I just like to go out there and pour my heart out onto the court, and just give it my all.’’

Shooter Ameliaranne Ekenasio was the other new face in the squad, returning after missing most of 2017 while having her first child.

When the call from Southby came, Ekenasio was busy attending to her son, Ocean, and she joked that it was an early test of her ability to juggle both responsibilities.

After she didn’t make the cut for January’s Quad Series, the 27-year-old had started to shift her focus to the Central Pulse and ANZ Premiership, which begins in May.

Ekenasio said it had been a challenge returning to the top level so quickly after giving birth, but that she’d received plenty of support.

‘‘I think a huge part is actually incorporating family into the environment, but still having a professional and a performing environment, so it’s like getting that balance right of what actually is going work for every individual player,’’ Ekenasio said.

’’All the women that have done it before, hats off to them, because I never realised how hard it was until now.’’

"It was more me crying and saying 'are you sure?'" Michaela Sokolich-beatson, above, on her callup to the Silver Ferns