TEAM PLAYER
Individual accolade not priority for Perry
ELLYSE Perry prefers Christmas to her birthday.
Shared experiences and not individual achievements have been the golden moments in the cricketing superstar’s golden life.
From junior triumphs she shared with childhood friends, boys and girls, to World Cup wins with her Australian teammates sport is, and always was a positive adventure for her.
She describes her experiences in junior cricket as “joyful”, and her rise to the top of the world as “relatively hassle free”.
Perry knows she’s been fortunate. Her sports-mad family were nothing but supportive when she wanted to play everything as a kid.
And as a self-confessed tomboy she had no issues playing with and against boys when girl’s teams weren’t available.
But her positive perspective, where any challenges and obstacles were seen as opportunities to learn and get better, provides a blueprint for navigating a path that will always have ups and downs.
“Sport is supposed to be a positive adventure for everyone,” Perry, 29, told News Corp.
“It helped that I was quite a tomboy growing up, most of my friends were boys and I was interested in a lot of the sports they played, so it was easy to make friends and have a great time doing that.
“I had an amazing family who were really supportive so it has made playing by and large the easiest part of it all.
“I literally just joined the local soccer team attached to my primary school, and then with cricket my dad was friends with the coach because they taught together and I knew his son.
“Some of the biggest highlights of my sporting life have been some of those junior sports year playing with the boys,
“I just felt like another player in the team, there was no distinction because I was a girl.”
There was no distinction, but there was attention. Perry said that was “cool”.
Perry’s positivity is at the core of her success.
She recently found herself in a conversation about resilience, a charactertrait intrinsic to so many other sporting journeys.
“I think resilience is a really interesting topic because it’s quite abstract as to what it actually is,” she said.
“Some of us go through life and sport relatively easily, the challenges that you face are quite minor and about maintaining a really good outlook on things. Then other people have significant trauma or challenges that pose a real obstacle.”