I still had issues with planes. I didn’t enjoy having to fly all the time, so I went to a psychologist to try and put some coping mechanisms in place, but they didn’t work and I was prescribed Valium to calm me down on flights. And then something happened that exacerbated my fear and took it to a whole new level.
I was back home in Australia after the WNBA season, having a drink with friends one night at Tilley’s after a music gig, and I happened to look up at the TV screen and thought, ‘That’s weird, must be a movie’. As I was watching a reporter talking, the footage of a passenger plane slamming into one of the World Trade Center buildings in New York was shown again. It was real! We were all suddenly glued to the broadcast. Then when the second tower was hit not long after, I was totally shocked, we all were. We kept watching as one of the towers collapsed less than an hour later, and then the other, with reports of another hijacked plane crashing. It was mindboggling. I had a friend in New York at the time, Sonja Henning, a fellow Storm player, and immediately texted her to make sure she was alright, but couldn’t get hold of her.
The television coverage was constant, on every channel, and we were completely consumed by it. I managed to get in touch with Sonja in the days following and she told me she was safe, but like so many others we were young and had never in our lifetime been exposed to anything like it before. I wasn’t very mature, and the attack instilled a further wave of fear in me, knowing I’d be travelling on planes all the time with my job, especially in the US.
For three or four days after that, I couldn’t get out of bed, I just lay there watching it all unfold on the TV. The media coverage was running 24/7 and I was just completely stunned, and scared. The whole thought of getting back on a plane, any plane, was completely terrifying to me. I didn’t know how to deal with it, I had few or no coping strategies, and my fear of flying had just compounded and grown exponentially.
The WNBL season started in October. September 11 had been so horrible, and it changed me, fed my anxiety. Being so young and quite sheltered, like every other kid in Australia at the time, it was the dawn of a new era for all of us, it was really frightening. I didn’t want to go back to the US because I was afraid. But then I also remember thinking, ‘There are so many brave people in the world who have to face things like this, who are facing it, pull yourself together!’. I told myself that I had to get on with it, but I was still an absolute mess before travelling back. In the end I just forced myself to do it.
When I returned to the US, airport security was over the top and didn’t get any better after that. Security at American airports had always been tight, I remember thinking it was different from Australia, much tougher, even before September 11. I arrived back in Seattle shaken but wanting to train and play, do my job—and then a few days before the 2002 season actually started, I rolled my ankle badly in training. I’d rolled my ankle numerous times, ‘No biggy’ I thought, but by the next day my ankle and leg had turned black. I missed the first week of games, but rushed back to play thinking it was just a bad sprain, I’d had plenty of sprains before. I did get through the season on it, but after that season I started to experience really intense peroneal pain (pain in the area running alongside my fibula), but still kept playing through it, something I’d tended to do since I was 12 years old.
That second season with Seattle was where I first met Sue Bird. Sue is such an incredible person and an impressive player. A year older than me, Sue had been named New York State Player of the Year in high school and was invited to play in the All-American WBCA game for the top 20 high school students in the country. She then had four years playing at college, taking out Women’s Basketball College Player of the Year in her final year, before making the number one draft pick in 2002. Seattle picked her up for the 2002 WNBA season, and in my opinion there has been no better point guard in the world previously or since. A point guard is generally the creator of shots for other players on the court, and Sue could not only create shots but take her own shots too, easily. That’s why she’s so good.
Sue is friends with everybody, she’s so personable and engaging. She can have a conversation about anything, she’s very charismatic, and people really warm to her. We are yin and yang—her personality is so out there, and she’s vibrant, outgoing, she can talk to anybody, whereas I can be completely the opposite, especially so back then. We developed an incredible working partnership on the court, and off the court became good friends. On the court we complemented each other, and having the best point guard and a strong power forward makes it a hell of a lot easier to get the points for the team. A scorer still needs a point guard to get them the ball. I’ve always said that I don’t think I would have managed to achieve all I did in the US without Sue being there all the way.
Sue and I became joint captains of Seattle after she was drafted. Coming through college she had plenty of experience with presentation, and the media, she’s very articulate. Sue knew how to talk to them, how to tell them what they wanted to hear. I watched her that entire season and she was so good at it. Being around her made it easier for me in social situations, in dealing with the media, in everything, because she took up the slack. I watched and I learnt a lot from Sue.
The two of us went on to play in the All-Star games that season. I really didn’t like the hype around them. It seemed like it was show time for nothing, an accolade really, and being in that environment used to make me feel quite ill, it was too overwhelming. An entire weekend and all we did was have photographs taken and pose, wear dressy clothes, sign autographs. Wearing high heels and dresses has never been my thing. I’m every part a woman and love all things feminine, what we do and how we do it, but dressing up like that was unusual for me, normally I would be wearing training gear, being myself. I’m a real comfort creature—anything out of my comfort zone I struggle with. I wish that I loved wearing dresses and glamming up more, but that’s just not who I am. Now I’m older I’m a lot better at dealing with it than when I was young, but back then it felt like I was constantly being pushed into situations where I wasn’t comfortable, wasn’t being myself, and that wasn’t the career I thought I’d chosen. Over there you’re in the spotlight, here people have always sort of let me be who I am. In Australia I didn’t have to worry, because all I had to do was play.
Seattle made it to the playoffs that year, and we came up against the LA Sparks. Lisa Leslie and I ignored each other completely, which had become the norm—except when we were on the court. In the second game, she kneed me in the groin and I came down hard. I managed to foul her three times in six minutes and ended up on the bench. I took everything so personally with her, every match up against Lisa just seemed to get more and more physical.
LA pushed us out of the playoffs in the first round and ended up beating New York Liberty to take out the 2002 final. When I was home in Australia after that season, I still had the niggling peroneal injury, but I’d also made a decision. I needed to be stronger. I started drinking protein shakes, and eating a lot more protein in my diet, together with lifting weights to build up muscle. I was determined—not only did I need to get bigger, I also needed to dominate in the key.