The 16-year-old arrived back in Dunedin on Monday night after almost a month of high-level sporting competition. Leaving for Las Vegas on Boxing Day, she played basketball for the South Island's Mainland Eagles on a two and a-half week trip.
After returning to Dunedin for five days, she was on a plane to Auckland. There she was in action for the New Zealand mixed under-18 touch team at the youth transtasman series. She was happy to be home, although she had learnt plenty from both experiences.
In Las Vegas, her Eagles team, comprising a selection of the South Island's best youngsters, had an unlucky exit to its early-tour tournament. Needing to beat Foothill High School to make the quarterfinals, the team went down by two points in overtime. From there the team played a series of women's club and high school teams, all of which proved strong competition.
''I had a really good time,'' O'Neill said.
''It was a much different experience. It's a much different style of basketball to New Zealand. It took us a couple of games to adapt, but we learnt really quickly how to play and adapt to the refs.
''[There was] no shot clock, it was a much slower game. We had to learn to try to take control and play our game and slow the game down.
''I really liked it because I like trying to speed the game up. They weren't used to that, so we got a lot of fast break lay-ups and easy points.''
The St Hilda's Collegiate pupil had hardly been back in the country when she left for a three-day training camp with her New Zealand touch team. That was a precursor to the youth transtasman series against Australia at the weekend.
Her team lost all three games, but proved competitive and went to extra time in the last one. Australia went on to win the overall tournament, which also included boys and girls teams in both the under-18 and under-20 age groups. Playing against Australia was something that was difficult to prepare for.
''It was a massive step up. Nothing can really prepare you for playing against the Aussies. We were trying to replicate the intensity of what it was going to be like in our training sessions beforehand.
''But it's really hard to prepare for something like that, because we just had no idea what it was going to be like. And the atmosphere was so different with the crowd. They just played really fast and their fitness was unreal.
''But I personally had a really good time and I was so stoked to be able to represent my country.''
While her recent basketball escapade was not with a national team, she had played for the national under-16 team. She would trial for the under-18s later this year.
Her immediate focus though was on the touch national championships, at which she hopes to improve on the third placing her Otago team achieved last year.
She had not decided if she would focus on one sport yet, enjoying the benefits of playing both.
''I really enjoy both of them because they're so different. But you can take a lot of the skills from each sport and carry them over, like speed and agility and fitness.''
