PACT THAT SEALED VIXENS’ CLIMB
MELBOURNE Vixens’ ascension from Super Netball wooden spooners to premiership threats began with a climb in the Australian Alps, months before the season’s first centre pass.
The aptly named “Big Walk” is a grade 3 hike in the Mt Buffalo National Park just outside of Bright, in northeast Victoria.
Through eucalypt forests and waterfalls, past granite cliffs surrounded by towering snow gums, the playing group climbed 1000m over an 11km hike that charted the rise they hoped to make this season.
When coach Simone McKinnis addresses her side ahead of the grand final at Perth’s RAC Arena on Sunday, a photo of the Vixens at the top of the climb will be pinned to the team’s whiteboard. rd.
Talk to any of f the players and you will hear the phrase, “the Vixens way”.
Finishing at the he bottom of the ladder is not the Vixens way, and the club was determined it would not happen en again in 2022.
There were e mitigating cir- cumstances last st year.
Co-captain and Diamonds leader Liz iz Watson was forced off court for the season following surgery y on a broken foot, while the retirement ment of international shooters Caitlin Thwaites and Tegan Philip following g the club’s 2020 premiership win left the Vixens with several young players in key positions.
The result was two wins last year in a very un-Vixen-like performance.
With new recruits – Diamonds squad member Kiera Austin and former Fever defender Olivia Lewis – in tow, the group went into camp and tackled a walk they hoped would be a symbolsymbol of the season to come.
“We started at the bottom, where we literally felt that we were, and we were metaphorically making our way to the top,” Watson said. “We actually had our staff join us at the very end … and it was nice just to sit there.”
There’s no denying 2021 was a difficult year for the Vixens and the league. Having spent all of 2020 in a hub in Queensland, officials were determined to attempt to play a homeand-away season but the continued Covid crisis and lockdowns in various states meant players were forced to outrun various variou shutdowns.
“After the novelty of leaving the state st for the first time in 2020 202 to be out of Victoria’s Co Covid crisis had worn off, I feel fe like there was a bit of fatigue fat in our planning group,” gro senior defender Jo Weston West said. “When you’re winning, it’s a little bit easier to cope with those challenges.
“So for fo us not to be getting the result resu on the scoreboard, but then also als having outside pressure – we were reigning premiers and a there was a lot of talk about how h it had been such a dramatic fall from the top – there’s a big learning curve. c
“I think any an person who plays in Victoria, you’re you’ trained to have a winning mindset from when you’re really young, so it was a very unusual position for all of us to be in.
“But it was definitely a bonding experience. I feel like we could have gone either way and it could have fractured a few of our relationships and our dynamics on court, but I really think we’ve been able to come full circle on it.”
Watson’s co-captain Kate Moloney said while last season’s disappointment could have affected the team, the belief they had in each other, the hard work they did and the standards they hold each other to, helped turn things around.
“We had that core group still from (when we won the premiership in) 2020 and I think that gives you belief knowing we were able to achieve that a couple of years earlier,” she said.
When the Vixens look at that photo on Sunday, they know they’re about to embark on the final ascent.
No one is taking for granted the work that will have to be done to overcome Fever in the final.
But if Watson and Moloney are able to hoist the trophy, it will be a moment of joy given the journey.