ANENDRA SINGH - Sports Editor Hawkes BAY Today 8th February 2011  

Three years ago Matt Wilson had caught the social bug.

He hung out with his school mates but sport was the farthest thing from his mind. Wilson had played rugby and cricket at primary school but lost the zest for an adrenalin rush when he graduated to Karamu and Hastings Boys' high schools.

But all that changed in the winter of 2006 when the teenager jetted off to La Coruna, in the northwest of Spain, to visit his relatives.

"My mother [Anne Wilson] and my grandmother [Carmen] both come from there," he says, elaborating on how he developed a passion for basketball watching his uncles and cousins play in the second-tier competitive league.

Little did the now 18-year-old know how inspirational that casual flirtation with scrimmaging and getting the ball into the hoop would prove to be as he prepares to pack his bags for the 2011 Australian State Under-20 Championship in Maitland, NSW, from February 20-26.

The 2m-tall forward is a member of the New Zealand Under-20 men's team and Hawke's Bay's Josie Stockill is part of the women's equivalent who will jet off on February 17.

Itching to put his height to good use, Wilson joined the elder brother of his best friend, Ezra Te Huia, of St John's College, to hone his skills.

Coach Jason Williams was holding a camp twice a week not long after that at the Hastings Sport Centre so Wilson went along after some encouragement from his mother and father Allan Wilson, who are both registered nurses at the orthopaedic ward of the Hawke's Bay Hospital in Hastings.

"Jason got me into the post moves for a forward and asked me over to the Hawke's Bay trials in 2007 and I got picked."

Two years later, he returned to Spain where he played in an under-19 tournament for a team where his great-grandmother hailed from.

"I made the tournament team," he explains, then returned to Karamu High School where he was enrolled from 2006-07.

With his game thriving and most of the Bay age-group squad at HBHS, the now seventh-former didn't need much persuasion from his fellow representative players to switch schools.

HBHS coach and former Hawks coach Curtis Wooten spoke to the youngster's mother, emphasising the need for Wilson to play more games than just 10 at a socially competitive level if he was to fulfil his ambition of securing an American college (university) scholarship.

She agreed and Wilson will sit his SATS in May before compiling video footage of highlights of some of his games to sound out the American scene.

Training with the elite Hawks franchise squad on Mondays and Thursdays, Wilson relished the three-minute court time against the Manawatu Jets in a preseason match in Waipukurau.

"I was able to experience what level the Hawks play at compared with the high schools," he says of the break two years ago, adding Wooten and Hawks squad member Ben Valentine are instrumental in his bid to get to the US.

Curtis says Wilson's work ethic and attitude are commendable.

"He has no problems getting up at 6.30 in the morning to go to the gym, which is what he's been doing for the past three years.

"Matt's athletic ability is okay.

He's battled with his weight but he's lost a few kilos and is improving," he says of Wilson, who worked out in a boot camp and conditioning drill before his national selection.

"He shoots quite well for a big man, runs the floor well and has good hands," Curtis says, confident Wilson will be at a US college in September.

The 2008 New Zealand Koru age-group player, who was relegated to non-travelling reserve because of a knee injury, has a mature outlook on life.

"I was wanting to go all the way to NBA at first but I've taken that dream down and I'm more realistic now," Wilson says, adding he would like to pursue a career at the ACB national league in Spain that he believes is at the NBA development level, with the help of Wooten and incoming Hawks coach Paul Henare in his swansong season for the table-topping New Zealand Breakers.

"Curtis was great in his time and Paul is now so I'm more than happy to take that on board."

Curtis also rates Josie Stockill highly and reckons she'll comfortably make the mid-major university league in the US, if not higher.

"She trains with my boys sometimes and she's as good as some of my boys.

"Put it this way, Josie will make my senior A boys' team and will be close to starting," he says of the 16-year-old Napier Girls' High School pupil who was voted the MVP at the national under-17 tourney that the Bay won last June under coach Shane Brown.

Stockill was later named in the All Tournament Under-19 team and voted the Rookie of the Year at last season's Women's National Basketball League (WNBL) as a Taranaki player.

Last September Stockill also played for the New Zealand Junior Tall Ferns against the Australian Gems in Palmerston North.

Brown has previously expressed dismay in losing Bay talent to other major centres because of a lack of resources here to field a team in the WNBL.

The last time the Bay women were in the league was in 2000 when former Tall Fern and current Hawks assistant coach Kristin Daly was prominent.