The 17-year-old Taieri College pupil has been selected for the New Zealand water polo youth development team, which will travel to Sydney to play local sides from January 15-21.
Pickering, who has been playing the sport for about seven years, had to go to extreme lengths to get picked for the development team, as no Otago teams competed in the nationals held in Auckland earlier this year.
''I was able to get in touch with a Wellington side called Harbour City and I played for them,'' he said.
He had earlier missed out on making the under-17 national team because of a shoulder injury, which made making youth team all the more pleasing.
He was looking forward to the experience of going to Sydney and facing quality opposition.
He enjoyed the sport largely because of the ''competitiveness of it''.
He started playing the sport when he was in year 6 at Silverstream school and was invited to play for the Taieri College team.
He had enjoyed the sport ever since and recently gave up rugby to focus on water polo.
He hoped to continue with the sport next year while he was studying carpentry at Otago Polytechnic.
His next aim was to make it in to an under-20 team and he planned to get together with a group and ''train towards that''.
