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Fairlie’s Adventures in the Snakepit
2007-04-22 12:43:31
Seeing as I’m really tall, (like, 6’1…I hate it….) I have always been told ‘oh you should be a model, or a basketballer!’ Now just quietly, my physique reeeallyy doesn’t lend itself easily to either of those options!!
I always played netball as a kid – since year 3 or something ridiculous! I was always the GK/GD until it was figured out by my year 7 coach that I could actually shoot goals! Well, it wasn’t so much shooting as it was standing over the hoop and dropping it in. I’ll never forget my first game in Year 7, I shot 23 goals!! (as you can tell, I’ve not achieved much in my life as I’m clearly hanging onto this top effort. And let’s not lie….it’s a top effort.)
In year 10 my best friend at highschool convinced me to play basketball with her instead of netball. Well who could’ve guessed my netball skills would lend themselves so easily to the Basketball court?! Who needs lay-ups when you’ve got the ‘stop-n-squat’? (you may have heard that term used by Liz Ellis…). So I played a couple of season’s at school…we were even the IGGSA 2nd Grade Champions in 1998! I dabbled in basketball at uni, but let’s face it, I was too busy coming up with creative reasons not to be on campus to actually be able to commit to a team.
For the past few years I’ve been moving around the country working in radio, and I’ve joined teams in Inverell (near Tamworth) which was a dismal season, then Shepparton (180kms north of Melbourne) where we were the Women’s 2nd Grade Runner’s Up! I then joined a mixed team called ‘The Dodgem Car’s’ with some friends from work which ended when one of our team members turned out to be a feisty criminal with scary cousins who stole stuff off us and we were too scared to kick him out of the team so disbanded instead!
Last November I had a career-ruining fall off a couch that ended in one broken elbow, and I had to kiss goodbye to my international basketball career! So I have not played in a while, but on Wednesday night I joined the Illawarra Women’s comp at the Snakepit! I’m still no good at lay-up’s, can’t really dribble and am not the most aggressive of players, but I’m really good at the jump-ball and if I can get a good enough lead, throw a killer ‘stop-n-squat’! And only a small part of me has joined to meet tall men…..
I will keep you posted on scores, but we won our first game by about 14 points! Good on us!
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