When it was announced back in September 1993 that Sydney was going to host the 2000 Olympic Games I was 12 years old, and I remember telling Mum, ‘I’m going to be there!’. Mum looked straight at me, and from her expression, it felt to me like she was thinking, ‘You can’t even get through training without crying’. I didn’t care, nothing was going to deter me, it was something I was going to achieve. Credit to my parents, as much trouble as I put them through, they never said that it wasn’t going to happen—it was always doable, everything was doable.
Mum was coach for the Albury under-12s, as well as for the under-14s during my first year at high school, when I began playing with two girls who would become my closest friends, Brodey Ball and Chelsea Grant. Brodey was at Murray with me, but she was popular, and we didn’t become friends until year 9 when my life at high school started to turn around. My friends were a sanctuary for me and aside from the occasional school yard drama, were my closest mates. Looking back, Brodey and I had a funny dynamic, she was one of the cool girls and I wasn’t, or I didn’t feel I was. In my first couple of years at Murray High we couldn’t stand each other, didn’t even acknowledge each other’s existence, even though we’d been playing basketball together since we were about five years old. By year 9 we’d started playing representative basketball together, and after that we’d sit on the big tree trunk in the middle of the school yard during lesson breaks and talk all the time. We grew up together. Brodey is such a beautiful person, it’s funny how you understand and appreciate the importance of these close friendships as you grow older.
I progressed from Albury to the NSW Country under-14s team, and played in the Australian Country Junior Tournament held in Albury the following January. Junior basketball teams come to Albury annually from all over the country, and that year my team made it to the final. During the final, my knee started hurting—it wasn’t too bad, I could have kept playing. I went off the court (I think we were already losing) and into the training room and wanted someone to fix my knee, but they couldn’t, so I just didn’t go back out there. Dad came into the first aid room and told me to get back on the court, but my knee hurt, and it was all too hard.
We lost that finals match, and I thought my parents were mad at me because they felt I’d let my team down. I remember Mum saying to me, ‘Lauren, if you don’t want to play, you don’t have to, but you do not ever let your teammates down’. I remember that so vividly. She went on, telling me that she and Dad weren’t going to push me to play, there was no obligation, I didn’t have to play to make them love me, they would love me no matter what, but I could not let my teammates down in a situation like that again. Ever. It was at that moment I realised just how much my behaviour had affected my parents. They thought I was only playing basketball to make them happy, they clearly thought my heart and soul weren’t in it at that point, and they wanted to give me the opportunity to get out if I didn’t want to be there. I think they were embarrassed more than anything, they thought I felt pressured to play, but I didn’t, I loved it, there was just a part of me that continued to act like a spoilt brat who thought she was better than the rest. I only ever wanted them to be proud of me—but I didn’t understand what that meant until they weren’t. That’s when I realised I couldn’t continue to act that way. From that moment, I gained more self-awareness and more awareness of people around me, I started becoming a better basketballer really, maybe a better person too.
When we arrived home after the tournament, I went straight into the computer room, wrote my version of a mission statement, and printed it out. My Dad’s best friend and his family were staying with us and I was a bit embarrassed that they were privy to the whole thing, but mostly I felt bad that Mum thought I was a bit of a sook and I had clearly let her down. The spelling was atrocious and definitely came from a 12 year old, but in my mission statement I said that I wanted to play basketball because I loved it, and that I wouldn’t be a big bag of wuss anymore. When I read it years later I remember thinking, ‘Oh my god, do you really need to show people this?’. I have been notoriously private my whole life, so even the littlest things impact me. You don’t want people knowing your vulnerabilities I guess, and I felt that was one of mine.
Writing that damn mission statement was a turning point for me. I’d made a commitment, whether I knew it or not, to harden up, toughen up and, perhaps more importantly, to be accountable. I trained, no one told me to, there was just something in me that made me work harder. I didn’t wake up and think ‘Today I’m going to train’, it was just in the back of my mind. No matter what, at some point in the day I would pick up a basketball and practise—wherever I went, I had a basketball in my hands, I wouldn’t put it down. That was my life from then on, I was always around a basketball court and if I wanted to achieve my dream, that was what I had to do.
I started making teams. Once I started being selected, I had an obligation to train, I knew I had to work harder to stay there. I was chosen to go on the NSW intensive training centre program in Sydney and Terrigal on the Central Coast for elite young kids in the state, and they gave me goal-setting tasks and shooting drills that I had to do every night. I was being held accountable and I took it on, I was going to succeed. I wasn’t fanatical, I wasn’t the sort of kid who would practise a thousand shots a day, but when I did train, I trained relentlessly. Everything started happening after that.
After the previous year’s debacle of not going back on court at the Country Junior Tournament, it was personally satisfying when my under-14s NSW Country team won the 1995 championship. It was a great fun game in my home town. Winning that was awesome. I then went on to play on several NSW Country and NSW State teams over the next year, and at the age of just 13, I was invited to play for the national junior team, the Gems. The junior team was for players under 20 years, the senior team, the Opals, is for the best players in Australia and has no age limit.
When good things happened, instead of getting excited I tended to get anxious. I was excited but I was also scared that it was too good to be true, that it could all go away, it would disappear—but I guess I never took anything for granted as a result. I did always worry about everything and, looking back, I wish I could have done that better, I wish I could have just enjoyed moments rather than being anxious about the future all the time.