What was to be a five-year role ended early amid a dearth of wins, but Daly-Taylor endures and still helps with the Hawks.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a long time since New Zealand last had a national women\u2019s league side, or even a serious top women\u2019s tournament contender, and Daly-Taylor doesn\u2019t see that situation changing soon.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot in the next five years,\u201d she said, telling Hawke\u2019s Bay Today her focus is now in coaching girls \u2013 \u201cfrom 8 to 10, or even 20\u201d.<\/p>\n
There has been talent in Hawke\u2019s Bay, such as Pahlyss Hokianga, who at 18 has played 14 matches for the Tall Ferns after becoming the youngest Tall Fern when used as an injury replacement in the Olympic Qualifier Tournament in Xi\u2019an, China, in February 2024.<\/p>\n
Daly believes her focus for the foreseeable future will be developing players with Hawke\u2019s Bay as a feeder to Wellington regional side Tokomanawa Queens, who play in the five-team Tauihi Basketball Aotearoa, which revived the national women\u2019s league in 2022.<\/p>\n
Away from the court, the career school teacher is now a real estate agent with Tremains and was in the car around town a fortnight or so ago when she answered a call \u2013 not from a potential vendor or buyer, but from Basketball New Zealand asking if she could be available on May 23 in Wellington to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n
She was the only one in the latest induction, with the hall celebrating 45 individuals and three teams across four divisions, covering coach, player, technical official and contributor, since it was inaugurated in 2016.<\/p>\n
Over a 32-year career in education, she served as assistant principal and director of basketball at Napier Boys\u2019 High School, helping build a strong basketball culture while mentoring generations of young athletes.<\/p>\n
Daly-Taylor said she felt humbled and grateful but secretly \u201cstoked\u201d to have been inducted.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty special when you look back on the journey and all the people who have been involved along the way,\u201d she said. \u201cHawke\u2019s Bay people need to feel that they are a part of this.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasketball has made me who I am and given me so many opportunities, friendships and experiences over the years, and I\u2019ve always loved being able to give back to the game, especially here in Hawke\u2019s Bay.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her recent step away from education to begin a career in real estate was inspired by a desire for a new challenge and the strong community values of the Hawke\u2019s Bay company.<\/p>\n
Long-time friend Simon Tremain supported and encouraged her transition into the industry. \u201cAfter 32 years in education, I felt ready for something different,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Doug Laing is a Hawke\u2019s Bay Today reporter with more than 50 years\u2019 fulltime in journalism, including covering a national women\u2019s basketball tournament in Napier for the Daily Telegraph, Napier, when women\u2019s basketball was in its heyday in the region in the late 1970s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What was to be a five-year role ended early amid a dearth of wins, but Daly-Taylor endures and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[96448,9490,64,63,726,22806,339517,185613,21814,1862,16487,9492,339518,16371,339516,12536,1787,85,61716,8293,32388,3205],"class_list":["post-696358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-96448","tag-after","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-been","tag-dalytaylor","tag-enters","tag-fame","tag-game","tag-hall","tag-hawkes","tag-inducted","tag-into","tag-kirstin","tag-more","tag-of","tag-sports","tag-stalwart","tag-than","tag-years","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}