ROSE Anderson never even dared to dream of a place at the Olympics when she was younger.

But now the talented 24-year-old from Meadowmill has made history as the first Scottish woman to be selected to play basketball at the Games.

And further good news for the county came on Tuesday when veteran judoka Euan Burton, a former pupil at Pencaitland Primary School, was also named in the Great Britain Olympic squad.

With Great Britain's women's basketball team having never played at the Olympics before, guard Anderson and her 11 team-mates will be entering uncharted territory when she steps onto the court against Australia in the home team's first match in London on July 28.

She told Courier Sport: "It feels pretty amazing to be selected. People always say that when they were growing up they hoped for something like that, but for basketball that just wasn't realistic.

"It wasn't a situation where one day I wanted to be in the Olympics; I wanted to play for Scotland, then I wanted to play for Great Britain.

"But to have this opportunity now leaves me lost for words and is just amazing.

"[Making history as the first Scot to play at the Olympics] does make it all the sweeter and just to be the only Scottish girl in the team is a great thing. I'm very proud to be Scottish and very proud to be representing Scotland." Anderson's selection for the Olympics is the end of a long journey which started at Portobello High School, where she took up the sport.

Working her way up through the Scotland age grades and into the Great Britain team, Anderson represented Edinburgh Kool Kats before heading across the pond to the University of Central Oklahoma. She played basketball for four years but had to sit out the sport during her final year at university because of US college eligibility rules, taking up rowing in the meantime.

She then had the option of turning professional in America but believed her game would benefit from more coaching so instead returned to Britain and played for Cardiff club UWIC.

Anderson, who has lived at Meadowmill, near Tranent, for 10 years since moving to East Lothian with her family from Portobello, had faced an anxious wait to hear if she would make the final 12 for London, having made her way into a reduced GB training squad of 18.

But on Saturday there was joy as she found out that she had made the cut - and can now concentrate on helping the team get ready for their biggest ever test next month.

"Some days I thought I was going to be in, some days I thought it was going to be someone else," Anderson said. "I had to give my all.

"It's been a long journey and it's been hard with the different cuts. We were a pretty tight-knit family so it was tough, but it's fantastic to be selected.

"We're ranked about 50th in the world so we need to do a lot of training. The training has been very intense. We started camp in May and since we've been training twice a day, two hours per session.

"We've just come back from a tour where we've played five games in six days, which is pretty brutal on your body.

"After the squad announcement we got to go to Loughborough, where all the Olympians are going to collect their kit. That was phenomenal, just amazing to be there.

"Now I've got some rest for about five days but then it's back to training, and we've got some big games coming up. We've got practice games against the USA and Australia so it's really going to get hard now.

"We've had some good results recently. We've just come back from the Czech Republic, who we beat by 24 points, and they're ranked fourth in the world, so we've done some brilliant things so far." That sort of performance bodes well for the Olympics themselves, where Great Britain face Australia, Brazil, Russia and two qualifiers in their group, with the top four going through to the quarter-finals.

And though Anderson admits that the team are unlikely to be challenging for the gold this summer, she believes their gritty and full-blooded style will ruffle a few feathers amongst basketball's elite in London.

"People aren't talking about us being gold medal contenders but our goal is to go out and cause upsets, and I think we are going to be able to do that," she said.

"One aim is just to get basketball out there, to put ourselves out there as a hard-nosed, blue-collar team and upset teams. Other teams don't like our style of play, they don't like our defence, but that's what we do.

"We've not got any superstars, we've got a bunch of girls who work hard, play gritty and can all do the job. Teams struggle with that, so that's why we've had results.

"We want to go out there and get the British people behind us." Anderson joins Burton, Prestonpans boxer Josh Taylor, and Tranent Paralympian footballer Blair Glynn in upholding East Lothian honour in London.

Burton, 33, was named as Great Britain's judo hope in the under-81kg category. He previously competed in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing but did not win a medal.