Year 13 Sophie Young has been selected for the NZ junior women’s beach volleyball team which will be travelling to the USA . Here Sophie shares her thoughts with us on making the team and her upcoming trip.

The team’s made up of 16 players (8 pairs). The players are aged between 16, 17 & 18 making me one of the older players on the trip.

We are travelling to California, USA. I'm not sure where we're staying yet but, as far as I'm aware, we will be travelling along the coast of California each day to play different games and tournaments. The trip takes place during the next school holidays (5th to the 19th of July).

I don't have much information on this yet, but I have gathered that the coach will put us into pairs with someone of similar age, that we play well with. As far as teams we'll be playing against, I have no idea, apart from that they'll probably be of similar age.

There was a training camp in Christchurch a couple of weeks ago as part of the selection process, but as everyone is coming from all over the place, it is quite hard to do team training. There is a camp in the middle of June up in Auckland, but I will be away in Hawaii with the school volleyball team so will be unable to attend. Two others from Nelson Girls and I are planning on doing some of our own training at Tahuna.

I think it's pretty cool, a great opportunity to represent the country for my age group and to get to travel to such an iconic place and where the sport is so popular. I'm excited to play, as I think the level of competition will be so high. It will be interesting to see how their style of play compared to ours. I'm also looking forward to playing on some amazing beaches by the city and experiencing a bit of American culture.