A Frensham student has a chance to be part of the Junior Commonwealth Games.
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Arabella McKenzie, 17, has been named as part of the 24-woman Australian women’s under-18 rugby 7s squad.
From the 24 players, 15 will be selected to represent Australia at the Junior Commonwealth Games in July.
Arabella has made a name for herself in the womens rugby 7s community, after showing off her impressive skills over the last two years.
The young player was approached by NSW Rugby when she was 15, and was asked to play rugby with an Illawarra team.
She was also part of the NSW Rugby 7s squad last year and played at the Nationals in Perth, where her team was defeated in the grand final.
Her performance in the tournament impressed selectors and she was notified of her selection in the under-18 7s squad just before Christmas.
“It was exciting because it was just from one tournament and i hadn’t really been playing 7s for as long as a lot of the other girls,” Arabella said.
Arabella will now take part in training camps were the squad will be cut to 15 players. Players will attend a camp on March 17 in Narrabeen.
Arabella will also play at 7s tournaments all over the state this year as part of Vixens.
“One of my coaches from NSW started the team. It’s an opens team and we go to all the tournaments throughout the year, we finish at the Southern Highlands 7s Tournament,” Arabella said.
Arabella has been completing a tough training schedule to keep up with the faced paced nature of rugby 7s and said that she was inspired by the Australian womens success at Rio.
“I love womens sport and I couldn’t pick a favourite. The girls in Rio inspired my to put my head down and train harder. I realised that i could be where they were too if I stuck with it,” she said.
Arabella said she wanted to make a name for herself in womens 7s. “I’ll be looking for a development contract with the womens 7s. That’s something I would really love to do, I can see myself playing 7s in the future so I’ll train really hard up until then and see what happens,” she said.