Playing for the Opals and in the WNBL, I had so much drive. I was 18, really tall and lean for my size, my body was still developing its strength, and the Sydney Olympics were 18 months away.
Cuba came out to Australia to play in the second Maher Cup, and the media were everywhere. The five games were to be in Melbourne, Bendigo in country Victoria, my home town of Albury for the third game, then Canberra, with the final to be held in Wollongong. We won the first match in Melbourne 80–58, and at the presentation ceremony it was announced that Robyn Maher was retiring, after playing her 374th international basketball game for Australia. Robyn was 39 years old, with two kids, and had decided to retire pre-injury, something every professional athlete hopes for.
With Robyn’s retirement, Michele Timms became the captain. Timmsy had been the face of basketball in Australia when I was growing up. I looked up to her, she’d already been playing in the WNBL in the US for three years, and she was truly iconic in the world of Australian basketball. She had a global attitude and was a great player, and even at 33 she was amazing. Watching her try to keep her knees strong and free of injury was inspiring, there was a lot of work she had to do off the court to make it.
The Cubans were tough, it was a physical tournament. Physicality is inevitable in basketball, especially under the basket, where elbows are out and you have to use your body to take hits and give hits. Anything goes, as long as the referee doesn’t see and call a foul on a player. We won the first two games, and the third game against Cuba was one of my career highlights, in front of a sell-out crowd packing the Albury Sports Stadium. I was home, playing for my country, in front of my mum and dad, Ross, Nanna Bennie, my aunties and uncles, some cousins and a lot of people I’d grown up with and cared about, and I felt so proud. With all of these people who were so special in my life watching, I scored the first nine points of the game. There are some moments you never forget and that was one of them. Timmsy hit a great three-pointer just before half-time, but Cuba didn’t want to give up the tournament and fought back to within five points—they were tough. There were plenty of fouls but it was still a great game, which we eventually won 85–73. I’d managed a total of 30 points for the game and pulled down 11 rebounds, and felt on top of the world. The Opals went on to win the Maher Cup, taking all five matches.
Next, we took on Brazil—silver medallists at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics—in the Goldmark Cup, playing in Darwin, Adelaide, Melbourne, Hobart and Geelong. Timmsy, Kristi Harrower and Jenny Whittle were back playing the WNBA season in the US at that stage, but we still won that tournament as well, beating Brazil in all five games.
It was then our turn to travel overseas, this time to the US for two tournaments involving Poland, Brazil and the host nation. We went to San Diego first to play for the Olympic Cup, a tournament organised by the US Olympic Committee, which included basketball among several other Olympic sports. We beat the reigning European champions Poland and then Brazil in the first two games, only to be beaten by the US, but it was enough for us to play the US again in the finals. During that game the lead swapped a couple of times, but the US snatched the win from us in the last 20 seconds. In the second San Francisco tournament, we could only beat Brazil, losing to Poland on the buzzer, and then we were absolutely smashed by the US 94–68. We’d lost all of the lead-up games played against the US. After that, it was back to Australia and more training—the Olympics were under a year away.
Arriving back in Australia, I suddenly became the face of the WNBL. All the top basketball players had to go overseas to make a living from the sport, there was nowhere near the money to be earned playing basketball in Australia compared with playing in Europe, Asia and the US. The WNBL was trying to encourage more sponsorship to entice players to stay in the country. There were photo shoots, trips to Melbourne for the season launch, and then an event at Bondi Beach with players from other teams in new uniforms to promote the sport. There was certainly the interest in Australia, more kids were playing, more people were watching our games, but the sponsorship raised was never going to be enough to pay every player on each team a full-time wage.
The Capitals had been the wooden-spooners of the WNBL the previous year before I joined, and they’d signed up a new coach, Carrie ‘Graffy’ Graf. Graffy had a clean slate at the beginning of that 1999/2000 WNBL season. The Capitals may have sat at the bottom of the ladder, but Graffy had all the pieces in place for that year to be a success. As well as Shelley Gorman, a veteran player with the Opals who’d been in the team that won bronze at Atlanta, the Capitals had the three of us from the AIS team who’d won the previous WNBL championship—Kristen Veal, Deanna Smith and myself—as well as Karen Smith, El Sharp and Kim Wielens, who were already on the team and all good players in their own right.
Having a player like me on court who could do different things like shoot, block and rebound, and using Graffy’s (then) non-traditional plays, which hadn’t been seen before, we went from the bottom of the league to the top in one season, winning 16 of the 21 games played. In the major semi-final, we came up against the Adelaide Lightning, who were number two on the ladder. We went down 84–91, which meant we had to back up and win the preliminary final against the third-placed Bulleen Boomers in order to make the grand final. Although we managed to beat them 80–66, we’d lost home-court advantage, which meant we travelled to Adelaide to again play the Lightning, and won! For the first time, the Canberra Capitals took out the WNBL final. I finished the season as top scorer, with an average of 23.4 points per game, with Kristen topping the league in assists, and on my 18th birthday I was again awarded MVP for the 1999/2000 WNBL season.
We were all playing and training hard, motivated, the anticipation of competing in a home Olympics pushing us on. Every week I’d travel to Sydney from Canberra for training sessions from Sunday to Tuesday with Shelley Gorman and the Sydney girls. It was pretty full on. I had training with Graffy the rest of the week, so just the preparation itself was a full-time job. I think only Michele Timms and Michelle Brogan were playing in the US at that time, so we had the bulk of the Opals team still in Australia, and that was awesome, we could work together, build as a team.
Feeling privileged had become the norm. My career had taken off, I’d become an elite athlete, the Sydney Olympics were approaching, and I was treated well. I certainly wasn’t the most approachable or appreciative person back then. I didn’t care when I was a kid. Kids do tend to be selfish until they have to take responsibility for more than just existing. It would certainly take me time to mature into respecting other people’s positions, especially when everything was being handed to me.
Just before the Sydney Olympics, we played against the US at Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne to a sell-out crowd. Before every match, we’d go through and identify the strengths and weaknesses of the other team with the coach, and I’d look at the particular players I’d be opposing. Being a centre, in this match I knew I’d be up against Lisa Leslie, a player I’d always admired. I was completely in awe of her and her playing style. The first time I ever saw her was in the US, in an elevator, before playing against her at the end of 1999. She didn’t say anything, and all I wanted was for her to say ‘Hello’, because she was a bit of a legend in my eyes. When she arrived in Australia it was clear that I was the up and comer, and she seemed so disrespectful towards me to the media, she’d be like, ‘Lauren who?’. It was just this big game to her. I’m not one to be like that, I’m someone who will tell it how it is—to a fault that’s how I am. She was clearly trying to make the point that I was irrelevant to her as a player, she wasn’t intimidated by me at all, nor should she have been. But I couldn’t help thinking that if she was making a point of writing me off, then she was actually really concerned, or at the least I was clearly on her mind.
There’s a photo of me and Lisa Leslie from that Melbourne game, and it’s me having a go at her and she’s looking at me as if to say, ‘What’s your problem?’. We lost that match, but it wasn’t the time to dwell on the negatives. We had an Olympic tournament to play.
The members of the Australian national women’s basketball team announced for the 2000 Olympics were Sandy Brondello, Michelle Brogan, Carla Boyd, Jo Hill, Kristi Harrower, Shelley Sandie, Annie La Fleur, Trisha Fallon, Rachael Sporn, Timmsy, Jenny Whittle and myself. Kristen Veal had a chance of making the team as a point guard but had a motorbike accident in Sydney, breaking her hand, and that effectively put her out of the squad. My dream, the dream I’d told my mum about when I was a defiant 12 year old, was coming true—I was going to play in the Sydney Olympics for my country.