On the way to USA

By Tania Martin
ROSIE Moult is set to take America by storm as she takes up a long-awaited basketball scholarship in California.
The Olinda 19-year-old has been working towards this moment for more than four years.
Moult has spent the past year and a half honing her skills at the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) and playing in the WNBL.
She will take up the opportunity of a lifetime at California State University, Fresno.
Moult is thrilled to finally get the chance to play college ball and hopes it will one day lead to a career in the game she loves.
She scored an AIS scholarship in December 2007 and has working towards her dream ever since.
“I have been speaking to the college for three years, I was going to go up there before I went to the AIS but I got offered a scholarship there and had to postpone it a bit,” Moult said.
After injuring her knee in 2007, Moult feared her career would be over.
But since recovering from surgery, the 183cm forward has worked her way back up to the top of her game.
Moult has also spent a lot of time travelling across the globe over past few years competing with the AIS, from Paris to Taiwan, Thailand and now America.
But despite travelling the world playing basketball, Moult says living in America would be a challenge, even though her time at the AIS in Canberra has prepared her for it.
“It not only helped my basketball but I experienced what it was like living away from home and it’s going to make it a lot easier moving over there (America),” Moult said.
She has also just returned from the world championship in Thailand playing for the under-19s Australian squad.
But she said it was a disappointing tournament after two years of preparation, with the team coming sixth.
“It was really bad because we won eight games and lost one and so did the US and Spain who came first and second, but we just happened to lose the quarter finals by one point,” Moult said.
“It was really disappointing because the team that came third we beat by 25 points in our pool round.”
Moult said training with the AIS had helped improve her game a lot and had also given her experience in a number of different styles of the game, travelling overseas for tournaments.
“I hope this opens the door for me to the WMBA and I want to also try out the European league … I am really not sure what will come out of it,” she said.
Moult’s brother Zac, 21, has also scored a scholarship, with a university in Nebraska.
The pair will fly out to the US on Saturday 22 August for, what would be, the adventure of a lifetime.