Wanted: The first Asian Silver Fern

When Lisa Lin was the only Asian face at the netball courts, she got used to people under-estimating her, but she proved them wrong and broke new ground this year.

Lin was named in the Southern Blast National Netball League squad, which sits just under the ANZ Premiership - New Zealand's elite domestic league.

The 21-year-old is the first player, who identifies as Asian, to reach this level of netball in New Zealand.

She has had to put up with some prejudices along the way.

Lin said some people would take one look at her and write her off.

"I just remember one time at under-15 reps we had a tournament in Palmerston North and my parents and brother were on the sideline and they heard like a few parents saying some crap about me. Things like 'look at this ching chong on the court', sort of thing, all that stuff," Lin said.

"But then I got a few intercepts, played well and kind of shut them up."

Lin was born in Auckland in 1999, a couple of years after her parents immigrated from China. The family later moved to Whanganui.

She started playing netball when she was about seven, a rite of passage for most New Zealand girls.

"I played football too and all I could do was run and I wasn't really co-ordinated with my feet, I was better with my hands and so yeah I think I did fall in love with netball because I was huge.

"In year one, I was probably double the size of the kids height-wise, I was huge so that's why goal-keep was my first position ...I was definitely a stand-out."

Lin, who got her height from her Dad, took to it quickly.

"The first year that I played, in year three I made it to a B team in primary school and then from then on, year four all the way through high school, I was in the A Teams."

Netball is very much an intergenerational game in New Zealand. Girls often follow in the footsteps of their mothers, sisters and aunties but Lin didn't have a pathway forged before her.

In China, Lin's mother was involved in athletics in the throwing disciplines, and her aunties were pretty big on basketball and volleyball.

It was actually her brother who encouraged her.

"He's actually 12 years older than me, he got me into playing football first, then netball because his teacher at primary school was my teacher as well, who was a netball coach as well and it went from there."

The odd one out

At the netball courts in Whanganui, Lin was more than just a rarity, she was the only Asian player there for a number of years and naturally felt like the odd one out.

"Even before playing netball ...I also played touch. I did cop a few racist slurs and stuff from the other kids, but at the time I guess I was so young you don't really understand what's going on or what they meant and stuff.

"But it didn't really affect me because I knew I was bigger, I was stronger and I was going to beat them."

Once people realised she was good, Lin thinks it helped her integrate and gave her a bit of 'street cred'.

"The dairies we owned in Whanganui were in the rougher parts and once I guess I started to become noticed at the courts and stuff, the customers started to sort of recognise me and I don't know, I think I gained a bit more respect from them as well."

Lin certainly didn't have to deal with overbearing sporting parents.

"I don't think my parents actually started watching me play until maybe year 12 and 13, so my last years at high school, purely because they just were working all the time.

"We owned a few dairies in Whanganui, and you're doing 12-hour days, seven days a week, so they didn't really have time to. They didn't even like drop me off to practice or take me to games, it was more my brother."

Many young Asian-New Zealanders have to navigate the deeply rooted belief that education is everything.

"At high school, my parents used to tell me 'Oh Lisa, sport's not a career, you need to be focusing more heavily on academics' - Asian parents," laughs Lin.

"The Chinese thinking is that to have a better life is to have money or financial security.

"I was thankful that because my brother is so much older than me, he caught the brunt of that and realised 'hey actually that's not the Kiwi way - do what you love and enjoy', leisure is actually an important part of life."

Lin did well in all areas of schooling life and was head girl in her final year at Whanganui Collegiate School.

The 180cm defender went through age group rep teams in Whanganui, then in Otago when she moved to Dunedin for university.

Since Lin started playing 14 years ago, she hasn't really noticed much change down at the courts.

"I could probably only say I've maybe only seen one or two Chinese-Asian girls playing netball. Probably one back at home in Whanganui when I was playing at high school and just like maybe one in Dunedin but hardly any."

Growing numbers

Location is a huge factor, according to Netball New Zealand's head of community netball, Ruth Stanley.

The population of New Zealanders who identify as Asian is now over 15 percent - in Auckland it's about double that.

The city is home to a third of all New Zealanders, and more than 40 percent are immigrants. Thirty percent are members of Asian communities.

And there's plenty of anecdotal evidence that Asian participation in netball in the big centres has experienced significant growth.

"Particularly in the Auckland area, and there's definitely more interest particularly in our junior Future Ferns spaces," Stanley said.

But can Netball New Zealand quantify it?

The national body currently holds no data to give it an accurate picture of who's actually playing their sport, but it's something they are trying to address.

"We've been working over the last two years to roll out a membership management data collection system across the country," Stanley said.

"It's really important that we know who our people are, know what the demographic changes are, know about our opportunities to retain participants but also attract new participants to our game.

"If we consider that by 2038, it's predicted that 35 percent of the population of Auckland is going to identify as Asian, it would be really remiss of us not to think about how we might be able to engage parts of that population with playing netball."

With registrations for this season still coming in, it will take some time to get data from the netball centres that have implemented the new system, but once they do they'll be able to get a breakdown by ethnicity.

"Three of our five zones, all their participants will be on this new system so that's really going to be able to give us better depth of information of what our Asian participation really looks like," Stanley said.

The 2020 School Sport NZ census shows that netball remains the most popular sport in our secondary schools with more than 25,000 students involved.

Other sports have been gaining ground; basketball now has 24,000 participants at high school level - 7393 of those are girls.

But volleyball stands out as one of the fastest growing sports and is especially popular among girls.

Of the 22,000 volleyballers at high school level - 14,000 of those are girls. The sport has enjoyed a 31 percent jump in numbers at secondary schools over the past four years. Netball has dropped 14 percent over the same period.

"I think there's always a, if we want to use the word, 'threat' to participation in our sport from all sorts of factors," Stanley said.

"Sports like basketball, badminton, and volleyball are sports that our Asian populations know well so it's always going to be easier for them to find out how to participate in those sports."

Stanley said making the joining process easy was crucial.

"A lot of the Asian and Indian communities have never heard of netball if they're new to the country. Our challenge is to get information out to those communities and give the parents confidence that netball is a safe fun environment for their children to participate in."

Trailblazer wanted

Lin, who's studying food science at Otago University, is surprised that more Asian players haven't risen to higher levels of the game in New Zealand.

"You look at China, basketball is so popular and they're good at it - the women's team is consistently ranked high ...there's good genes there.

"But then I also think it's the Chinese thinking of basketball is an Olympic sport, like you can make a living out of it, whereas netball it's only like a Commonwealth sport."

What would it have meant to Lin if she had seen an Asian player in the Silver Ferns, while she was growing up?

"I would have loved it and I think I would have ...although I've worked hard over the years, having that benchmark up there, it would have been so cool. There needs to be a role model or someone to look up to."

Netball New Zealand head of high performance Keir Hansen believes it will just be a matter of time before someone makes the breakthrough into the ANZ Premiership and Silver Ferns.

"There's no physical reason why not and so we would expect as more Asian New Zealanders start to play at the community level, more will start to progress through into the elite game, I have no doubt," Hansen said.

"It will probably take some time for that changing demographic within our community game to flow through to the elite level but it's certainly what we'd like to see. We want our teams and our competition to reflect the diversity within our community, so from our point of view it would be amazing."

Hansen said every sport needed a trailblazer.

"Having people who you can relate to from a cultural point of view at that top level is important so I think when it does occur it will be really good for the game and good for our talent pathway. The more players that we have aspiring to play internationally and professionally the better for the game in New Zealand."

Hansen said it was promising that Asian countries performed really well in sports that required a similar skill set to netball.

"There's three Asian countries in the top 10 volleyball nations in the world, three in the top 20 in basketball, so physically that translates quite well into netball."

The value of sport

Right now Lin is working on pushing her way into the game day team for the Southern Blast, with 18 squad members competing for limited spots.

"I'm still learning a new position I'm transitioning to wing defence. I've always been in the circle but with height being a difference need to get another position under my belt."

Lin, who is a key member of Dunedin Premier A side, the Southern Magpies, said she just wanted to take any opportunity that came her way.

"Take in everything that I'm learning at the Blast at the moment and the culture and the semi-professional environment I guess."

Lin recently participated in a live documentary stage production that explored what it meant to be Chinese in New Zealand as part of Dunedin Arts Festival.

At the workshop, she met some of the descendants of the early Chinese settlers in Dunedin.

During the workshop, Lin spoke about playing netball.

"And I remember one of the ladies saying 'look at the size of you! You're different to the other girls'. So yes that's one thing that makes me different to other Chinese girls - the height and the build."

Lin was thrilled that netball historians had recently discovered the first Silver Ferns' coach, Myrtle Muir, was a direct descendant of a Chinese migrant who arrived at the height of the Otago gold rush.

Lin said she was glad she immersed herself in a sport that had such a strong traditional hold in New Zealand and the friendships she had formed as a result.

And her parents have come around to seeing the value in it too.

"I think especially this year making it into the Blast team definitely like kind of made them proud. Just the persistence and proving to them I've made this, I've done this, I think they've just learnt to accept just to support me and stuff and I guess as long as I'm at uni as well," she laughs.