Croquet - not cricket - is Jasmine Rule's choice of sport.
The 20-year-old is fresh from winning an association tournament at the Forbury Park Croquet Club at the weekend, and is preparing for a national tournament in Nelson next month.
If she performs well there, she could be picked for the women's world championship in England in August, and a transtasman series against Australia in November.
It would be her third women's world championship, after she finished 31st in Egypt last year.
''It was pretty intense,'' Rule said.
''The Egyptian players were pretty serious. So, if you beat them they got pretty upset. There's lots of pressure to win.''
Rule made the knockout stages, before being beaten by a top-seeded Egyptian.
She also competed in the women's world championship at Mount Maunganui in 2011 as a school-aged qualifier.
Rule, who is studying for a bachelor of visual arts degree at Otago Polytechnic, started playing croquet five years ago and is ranked 40th in the country.
She is from Oamaru - but boarded at Timaru Girls' High School - and took up the sport after a few friends needed an extra player to form a team.
Rule joined the Awamoa Gardens Croquet Club in Oamaru, quickly working up the ranks and competing nationally.
Since moving to Dunedin, she has joined the Leith Croquet Club and trains there as much as the weather allowso.
While Rule has already competed in two women's world championships, her biggest goal is to be selected for the world championship in the United States next year.
The women's world championship was created to encourage more females to take up the sport, but the world championship is the pinnacle.
Rule mainly plays golf croquet, and is focused on playing in as many tournaments as possible in the next 12 months to improve her ranking.
