SHIRLEY-based basketball ace Charlotte Heron is moving up to the England under-18 squad - at the tender age of 16.

The 6ft 2in talent - daughter of former England international Cheryl - is in training for the European Championships to be held in Portugal this summer.

Heron earned her stripes at under-16 cadette level, emerging as England's top defender in the European Challenge round played in Croatia.

Despite beating Macedonia 81-56, the task proved beyond England's young team as they lost to Croatia 68-50, the Slovak Republic 70-55, the Ukraine 105-58 and Germany 64-56.

But it proved a good test for Heron, who secured 31 rebounds and 14 blocks in the games and had to contest with huge 6ft 6in German centre Katharina Fikiel, who was voted most valuable player of the tournament.

Fikiel, though, was not Heron's biggest opponent. She also found herself marking Croatian Luce Ivankovic, who stands at 6ft 9in and weighs 17 stone!

The Southampton girl earned great praise for keeping both players in single figures - but the difficulty of her task was underlined when she had to visit an orthondontist afterwards due to the attentions of a wayward German elbow.

Charlotte's dad, Dave, who is statistician for the Solent Stars men's senior team, said: "It was still a great achievement for England to have gone this far in the competition.

"All the European teams are highly professional with all the players going to heavily financed specialist basketball academy schools at an early age.

"In England the parents pay for almost everything and none of our coaches gets paid."