She was born in the year the state's last WNBL team folded and on Thursday Keely Froling will suit up for the Tasmania Jewels in their highly anticipated debut.
The links to the Apple Isle are strong for the 30-year-old whose mother Jenny played in the Hobart Islanders only title in 1991.
Now, after three decades in the wilderness, Froling, who has called Tassie home and played NBL1 there for the past five years, is a face of the franchise that has already achieved a league-high membership base and sell-out crowds not only for Thursday's opener in Hobart but almost every other home fixture.
"It's so special to play for the first Jewels team and bring elite women's basketball back to the island," two-time champion Keely told ESPN.
"I've made Tassie home and am so excited to show everyone how great the WNBL is.
"It makes it extra special Mum was part of that championship team, she loved her time here and hopefully we can replicate their success."
Jenny adds: "Basketball is such a small world, there's connections and threads everywhere you play. For Keely to have found a home in Tassie and to be now playing for them in their return to the WNBL is serendipitous and really special."
After playing in, and managing, Nunawading's powerhouse era, Jenny Froling moved to Tasmania with husband Shane when he was signed to NBL team the Devils by master coach Tom Maher in his only season at the helm of a senior men's team.
Robyn Maher was already a superstar domestically and internationally and her addition was a shot in the arm to the Islanders team.
Jenny had played with Robyn at the Spectres and when they teamed up again they were successful.
"I remember the Islanders being competitive, we trained hard but when you have Robyn Maher there's a standard she sets and I saw that at Nunawading. Andree Greenwood, Tania Clarke and Jo Nyhouse were all great players who had set a standard and Robyn helped lift it. We had Debbie Black and Kim Foley who were really good imports," she explains.
"Sometimes teams are never together again after one season, so you make the most of it and take advantage. We had the right pieces, right personalities and professionalism and were looked after by our owners."
In that sense, it's back to the future with the Jewels who rightly have and get everything their basketball brother the JackJumpers do.
This franchise has been a long-time coming as three-time league MVP and Olympian Kathy Forster can attest. A Tasmania icon, she was the first player from the state to be inducted into the Australian Basketball Hall of Fame.
"It's been 30 years too long for women's basketball in Tassie. To progress past NBL1, too many girls have had to leave here and also too many haven't been able to see a future pathway in the sport," she says.
"I coached teams as my daughters were growing up and saw many talented young women either give up or turn to other sports."
It's a scenario Hollie Florence, the state's most successful basketball export lived. Her and her brothers, including younger brother Nathan Grima who played 86 AFL games for North Melbourne, all left the state to pursue elite sporting careers.
The Olympic medallist and 2006 World Champion moved to the AIS in Canberra as a teen to begin her pathway that took her to the WNBL MVP, the international stage and Europe.
Hollie's eldest daughter Emmerson is 15 years old, impressing in junior basketball ranks and measures in at a whopping 199cm. The family live in Melbourne but extended family remain in Tassie.
"To know young girls can get to that level and not have to leave Tassie is so good," she said.
"I'd love if Emmy was in the national league and got to play for the Jewels, it would be awesome.
"We have a lot of family still there. It's really only my brothers and I who left and we all left for sport and now all these years later, Tasmania have a WNBL, and AFL and VFL teams." One of the first beneficiaries of the Jewels is Andie Smith, 18, the younger sister of Opal and WNBA star Alanna.
Like Foster and Grima before her, Smith gets to inspire a new generation of female basketballers who now can stay and play at home while defending the island.