A Rotorua solo mother will have her name put on the child sex offenders' register after being sentenced for indecently assaulting a 12-year-old boy she had been coaching for basketball.

Judge Phillip Cooper made the order in the Rotorua District Court on Thursday when he sentenced Pamela Kulukulu Purdie, 24, to nine months' home detention.

He told her her name would go on the register because of her continued denial of her offending, her former work as a coach and teacher's aide and the disparity of ages between herself and her victim.

Purdie was found guilty by a jury in March for doing an indecent act on a 12-year-old boy and indecently assaulting him when she climbed into the bed he was sharing with another boy during a team-building sleepover at her home.

She was found not guilty of exposing seven boys to indecent material.

From the dock, a tearful Purdie told the judge she had been a New Zealand representative basketballer in her teens and a young achiever at high school.

She said she had coached basketball at various age levels and had close whanau support..

"I am a solo mother, committed to my beautiful three-year old daughter and my studies," Purdie said.

Judge Cooper said he took note of a comment from the trial judge, Judge Josephine Bouchier, that the youthful witnesses at Purdie's trial were clear and credible in their evidence.

"Yet you still maintain your innocence . . . like the court your are bound by the jury's verdict," he told her.

He noted the significant impact Purdie's actions had on her victim who had now virtually "shut down" and had lost trust in people, adults in particular.

-AAP