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jamiehamiltonfolio · 5 years

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Feature story- Life beyond sport for professional athletes

Most young basketball players see playing professionally is a dream, along with representing their country. While the majority will never get past the local courts, Jason Smith went far and beyond. Over 400 games in the NBL, three time champion, Grand Final MVP, seven years representing Australia at international competition and captaining them for a year. But life continues after the jersey is hung up, and not a lot of athletes are ready for what is on the other side.

For Smith, all he needed was an opportunity and he seized it. Not being a standout junior in basketball, but football, his passion for the hard court developed later in life. But not so late that he could not develop his skills overseas at a young age. Following in the footsteps of Boomers legends such as Ray Borner and Luc Longley, he accepted an offer to move to America as a student athlete, studying and playing basketball at California Lutheran University.

“An associate [of CLU] was visiting from the States”, Smith said. “It was right place at the right time. I played well and he was looking for an athletic guard so he offered a position to me that day.”

A common finding among many Australians attending American Colleges is the ease in which the education side of things is. The level of education for student athletes is much lower than that in Australia. Not having to worry about class-work leaves more time for students to focus on basketball. Smith took full advantage of this, starting the majority of games in his freshman and sophomore seasons.

A series of events, including a serious knee injury requiring surgery lead to Smith returning to Australia, where he practically walked into a professional contract with NBL side South East Melbourne Magic. He then spent the next 14 years playing professional basketball full time.

As he begun to slow down, he approached the University of Sydney to talk about life after basketball.

“I was 30 years old, and I knew I was winding down, probably 5 years before I retired and I just spoke to one of their advisers and said ‘this is who I am, this is my background and education I’ve achieved so far’.”

Smith spent the next 5 years balancing playing for, and most of the time, captaining the Sydney Kings whilst completing a Masters of International Business.

Struggling to adjust to studying again at first, Smith found his rhythm and, with the backing of coach Brian Goorjian, had one day off per week to focus on his studies. This worked in his favour, as after he retired from basketball 2009, he stepped straight into a job at Commonwealth Bank Australia where he is now a senior manager.

Having been vice president of the NBL Players Association, Smith knows all too well how devastating life can be for players after they retire. He tried to initiate a rule where minimum salary players were required to have some form of formal education.

“TAFE or University. Whatever it is, as long as you’re getting skills outside of basketball to help you prepare. But I don’t think a lot of governing bodies do enough in that space, because you’ve got every single participant dealing with this issue. Every single one of them. It’s not dealing with injury because that doesn’t happen to every single player, but you’ve got every single player that will come to the end of their career. So when you’ve got 100% participation in this element of the sport, there should be some resource allocated to assist in their transition and in basketball there’s very little.”

This has improved since Smith ended his career, however many players still struggle with starting with life after sport.

There are however, a handful of players who consider their education at a young age, and put it above their potential career overseas.

Current Nunawading Spectres Big V guard, and Murray State Junior College alumni Rachel Poke gave up the potential to play basketball at a Division 1 College, instead deciding to return home to Australia to continue her education.

Poke noted the differentiation in credits when completing a degree in America as opposed to Australia, and how the lack of knowledge and transparency did not help her fully understand her options.

“Both universities over here [Australia] said that for a 4-year degree I would have got a full Bachelors Degree,” Poke said.

“[In America] for a Bachelors Degree I only would’ve got 6-12 months credit. So, doing 4 years over there [America] and doing 4 years back here to become a High School teacher just seemed a bit much. I always knew that not all of it would transfer, but I was hoping more than that would transfer.”

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jamiehamiltonfolio · 5 years

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Concert Review

JOY. featuring Anfa Rose and Blessed VENUE: Northcote Social Club, Melbourne DATE: 31 March

Having made music her whole life, 20-year-old musician and producer JOY. is very well known in the Australian underground music scene. The unique mix of hard, bass heavy beats with her soft, sweet voice has earned her a devoted fanbase across Australia and lead her to several stints in America to make music with Universal Records, as well as several collaborations with the likes of Peking Duk and 360.

Recently, she has travelled across Australia opening for English crooner James Bay in 2016 and American sensation Kehlani in 2017.

Following the release of her sophomore EP SIX, JOY. set out on her second headline tour, traveling to Melbourne and Brisbane as well as a show in her pseudo-hometown of Sydney.

JOY. was supported by her close friends Blessed and Anfa Rose, embarking on their first national tours.

Blessed, with his wavy Frank Ocean vibes definitely set the tone for the evening. His vocals were perfect, and made the sold out Northcote Social Club crowd warm up and ready for what else was to come. A relative unknown, Blessed wowed the crowd with his singles Insanity, My World and his newest single Superfly.

Next on stage was rapper Anfa Rose, who has blown up the scene with his recent EP She Been Waiting II. This was when the crowd really started to heat up, with his unique blend of singing and rapping, his lyrics were what stood out the most to someone who had not listened to a lot of his music. The surprise of the night came when he was joined on stage by Manu Crooks. There might have only been a few hundred people at the club, but it sounded and felt like a sold out Wembley Stadium when the beat hit for their collaboration single All I Need.

I didn’t think the crowd could get any louder than it did at that moment.

I was wrong.

JOY. hit the stage around 10:30, opening with Need You.

The night was a mix of old and new songs, busting out some tunes off ODE, her debut EP.

The concert was not so much an event, but more an appreciation of the talent that JOY. possesses. She spent most of the night sitting at the piano, but that didn’t take away from it. The crowd was in awe of her vocal range and overall ability.

My personal highlight for the night was when she played Captured, the first original song she ever released. Albeit a remixed version, it was amazing to hear the first song I ever heard of her being performed live.

She closed the night with her biggest song, Smoke Too Much. This was the perfect finish to the night and a great way to send everyone home happy. This was convenient because getting anywhere from Northcote at 1AM on a Sunday morning is near impossible.

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jamiehamiltonfolio · 5 years

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Home is where the rings are

The Ashwood Netball Club finally has a permanent home at the Waverley District netball courts.

Ashwood were one of the few clubs not associated with a school, and never had a secure home base prior to acquiring the rights to the club.

After spending over 15 years balancing between the Waverley courts, Oakleigh Recreation Centre, Waverley Basketball Stadium and Mt Waverley’s Central Reserve, the club officially have sole use of the club rooms attached to the courts.

The club acquired the club rooms after realising they were not being utilised at all.

“We noticed that [Ashwood] Cricket Club were only using half of the rooms and the other half were just sitting there going to waste,” said ANC committee member Maryann Hamilton.

“All we had to do was contact Monash Council and the rooms were ours, it was as simple as that.”

ANC now control the western side of the building, and have completely redesigned it in pink and black. Committee member Mel Joyce, who has a family member in the design industry, suggested the revamp, to make it feel more like home.

The dividing wall separating the netball and cricket club now sports a giant pink claw mark, recognisable to any netballer in the area as that of the Ashwood Cats.

Having a home at the Waverley netball courts has made life much better for those involved in the club.

“The club rooms are a great place to meet and mingle with other parents and have a coffee. I’ve met heaps of new parents at training and at games,” said Nicole Mascurine, mother of two daughters who play at Ashwood.

“The amount of times I’ve fled down there when it’s raining!” Mascurine jokes.

The club decided to move to Waverley after almost ten years training at Oakleigh Recreation Centre.

“I grew up training at ORC,” said ANC Head Coach Alex Hamilton. “It’s sad, in a way, to move away from the place that houses so many memories.”

“I remember the first time I step foot in the stadium. The first goal I ever shot. The first time I met my netball inspiration.”

“But with the move to Waverley, hopefully the next generation will have all these memories there.”

The club wanted to train at Waverley for a while, but deemed it too dangerous. All that changed with the recent $1.3 million redevelopment of the courts, including complete resurfacing and the instillation of floodlights.

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“I had the odds stacked against me” Lucas Farrimond is changing the way young boys see netball

Netball has always been seen as a sport for girls.

In fact, the sport of netball was originally dubbed ‘ladies basketball’ with rules adapted to suit the femininity attached with the times. Nowadays, netball is an incredibly physical sport, with blood and bruises commonplace.

It is no longer a sport for girls, it is a sport for hardened, tough athletes.

Although nowhere near as popular as it is for females, many boys are more than happy to pull on a bib and step on the netball court.

One of those boys is 14 year-old Lucas Farrimond, of Ashwood Netball Club in Melbourne’s south-east.

Netball was always in Lucas’ blood. His mother was a state representative in her native Western Australia.

Starting when he was six years old, Farrimond immediately faced scrutiny and negative comments from spectators.

Julia Farrimond remembers the feedback her and her son would receive upon stepping on the court in South Australia, where he lived until he was eight.

“It was a little bit difficult at first, in Adelaide, because we were in an area where it was…probably…[shunned]. Not the done thing to do, have a boy play netball.”

Playing in positions that require a much more physical style made it difficult to avoid the comments and negative feedback.

“Starting off as a defender, it was hard, ” Lucas recalls. “I would have a magnifying glass on me. If I bumped into someone everyone would be like ‘aw contact’. I had the odds stacked against me.”

Julia recalls the uneducated comments she hears, even to this day. “He would cop a lot of comments, particularly if I put him into the defensive end. You get parents that don’t understand that netball is a semi-contact sport, and that you don’t have personal space.”

“It made me feel, in a weird way, kind of good,” Lucas snickered with a smirk and chuckle. “It meant that I was doing my job as a defender.”

“But it’s a bit hard when you have 40 year old men yelling at you from the sidelines…or even players that you’re playing on, the comments that they say.”

“When they’re using it as a sexist thing, that’s when my mum heckles stand up,” Julia responds whilst laughing, but a look in her eyes that told me she was serious.

“A couple of times I’ve taken it to the WDNA (league in charge of Lucas’ domestic team), and they’ve handled it beautifully. The WDNA want boys to play and support that pathway, and don’t tolerate any of it.”

Realising that the comments would only become worse as he got older and bigger, Julia decided to transition the way Lucas played, changing him from a defender into the goal-shooting machine he is today.

“When we came to Victoria (2012) I started to change Lucas’ game more into the shooting end, because he loved it anyway. He proved himself to me, as a coach, by working really hard and practising, and shooting.”

“Over time, people would actually see his game as being very clean and very concise netball…He actually cops a lot of contact. The girls go harder at him.”

Lucas’ talent on both ends of the court earned him selection into representative teams since he has been eligible. Starting with Waverley District in Under 13’s, he was soon after selected to represent Victoria. He has spent each of the last three years in the navy blue and white, with aims to one day represent Australia.

Both Lucas and Julia think playing in the inaugural Junior M-League season has revolutionised the way he plays.

The Junior M-League is an Under 17 competition is a joint venture between the Victorian Men’s and Mixed Netball League (VMNL) and Netball Victoria. It is the first of its kind in Australia.

According to the VMNL website,

“The competition aims to provide a pathway with more opportunities for boys to continue their development in a competitive environment, playing at a high standard with likeminded players and will be an ongoing competition.”

After noticing the experience and talent the Farrimond family had, VMNL and Netball Victoria contacted Julia to be part a committee to “try and inspire, and get a lot more boys playing netball”.

“There was this gap. Nowhere for the boys to go, except for here (WDNA) which we encouraged a lot of boys to do. So we were speaking, as the VMNL, about how we’re going to get the boys to play. We need to create this junior league. My suggestion to the team was to go to the associations, get the associations involved so that we can actually build the base from the associations and have a ‘Waverley’ boys rep. WDNA were the first to put their hands up for a boys team and then it flowed from there.”

The league features five teams representing Waverley, Doncaster, Essendon and two representing Darebin. The competition is played Tuesdays at the Whitten Oval between June and November.

“I don’t get a lot of time outside of netball,” Lucas says as Julia sighs, thinking about all the petrol she has used travelling all across the state for Lucas’ netball.

“I do it eight or nine times a week. I coach and umpire too. It’s a lot. In my spare time I like to just relax.”

“I try and do most of my schoolwork at school, so I don’t have a lot of homework.”

Lucas uses every second he has spare with his friends, but with all the time they spend together, the relationship between him and his mum is one to be envied.

“Do you remember what you said when you were nine years of age? What you wanted to do?” she asks him.

“He was watching the Australian Diamonds play and he said to me ‘I’m going to represent Australia one day mum’.”

“Next year, that’s my goal.” Lucas declares.

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Former athletes are crucial in the media, but are they journalists?

It is almost impossible to turn on the television to watch a game of sport without at least one current or former player being involved in the broadcast.

Regardless of the sport, these people are brought in to give their specialist insight and add to the overall experience for fans watching at home.

As long as sport has been broadcast, so-called ‘experts’ have been involved. Typically a former player or coach, their knowledge and experience is exploited as they explain what is happening in greater detail to the fans watching or listening, and intricately breakdown details.

While these people might be well suited for covering the sport on TV, trained media and journalists are just as important in the grand scheme of things.

Increasingly, former athletes have not only been involved in the broadcast of sport, but the way it is covered in the media as a whole.

Many athletes see working in the media as a natural stepping-stone for a job after their sporting career is over.

Almost every newspaper has articles and previews/reviews written by expert analysts, typically former greats. Retired AFL stars like Matthew Lloyd and Dermott Brereton are penning articles for Melbourne’s Herald Sun, and current rugby league national coach Mal Meninga is featuring in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph.

The insight a former player or coach gives is one that many fans thrive on. Mick Malthouse, one the greatest AFL coaches of the modern era, is a regular sight in Melbourne newspapers, and is trusted because his history of success at the highest level.

This experience and history adds credibility and weight behind the words, a benefit not shared by non-athletes.

Their articles are a pivotal part of the publications they are featured in for a number of reasons.

A traditional journalist may have spent their entire career covering one sport and have just as deep an understanding, however their insight would mean no more to a reader than a former coach or player.

Former athletes add ‘colour’ to stories with the ability to use personal anecdotes and relate to what the current day athletes are doing.

As much as people groan at the ‘back in my day’ generation, it builds the narrative and allows a comparison of the past and present that many love.

Broadcasting teams of NBA games are flanked by greats of days gone by. Anecdotes of playing with and against the likes of Jordan, Stockton and Ewing are constant, specifically with the ever-raging argument of who is the greatest of all time.

All that in mind, ex-players should not be considered journalists.

By dictionary definition anyone who writes for a news publication is a journalist. However in this context, the American Press definition suits better,

“Journalism is the activity of gathering, assessing, creating and presenting news and information. It is also the products of these activities”.

The act of simply writing a story that is featured in a newspaper does not make one a journalist. Uncovering, researching and producing a story does.

What retired players have in terms of name value and experience in the sport, they lack in training and news sense. That is where trained and experienced journalists are necessary.

Former players are best suited for writing opinion pieces and stories that require a history in the sport or expertise. What they are not suited for writing are match reports and news stories that require journalistic intuition and knowhow.

Skills required to write these stories can only be achieved through years of practice and experience in the industry. This training allows people to fine tune their talents and hone their craft. When the athletes were running around on the field, journalists were refining their skills, covering those who are now their competition.

Also pivotal in writing these stories is the ability to distinguish what is and isn’t newsworthy, and the ability to find an interesting story even when it seems impossible.

With news stories occasionally being difficult to break as they are insensitive, controversial or could ruin someone’s reputation, former players may not want to be the one to break it, having been in those shoes before.

Journalists are able to complete all these duties, but a former player is much less versatile.

Several new platforms have been created for athletes to practice writing and make their voices heard.

The Players Tribune, founded by 14 time MLB All Star Derek Jeter, allows athletes to create and share content straight from the horse’s mouth.

The organisation aims to provide an unedited voice to athletes. A space for them to be free and say what they want without fear of it being misconstrued. It also allows for opinions to be shared and rebuttals to be made.

Dominican baseball star José Bautista wrote an article in defense of his infamous ‘bat flip’ during the 2015 MLB playoffs, and in doing so, took a swipe at the media coverage and response to the incident.

It has also been the platform used to break many significant stories in American sport since its launch four years ago.

Kobe Bryant shared his famed Dear Basketball retirement letter on the site. Kevin Durant used it to announce he was leaving Oklahoma City to go to the Golden State Warriors.

The website, and similar ones such as Australian based PlayersVoice, have received a lot of backlash from traditional media outlets as they fear they are making them obsolete.

In an interview with ESPN in October 2014, Jeter said he believes The Players Tribune will not impact mainstream channels.

“We’re not trying to take away from sportswriters”, he said. “ Sportswriters are what make sports successful. I think we’re sort of working in conjunction with them.”

The biggest issue with athlete-driven media is the question of objectivity. Will the tough questions be asked and controversial stories be published?

One former player who is now a highly respected journalist is Doris Burke.

The ESPN analyst has been a standout on college basketball broadcasts since 1991, covered the WNBA for the first 20 years of its existence and is a stalwart of NBA sidelines.

Prior to her career covering the sport, she was a standout point guard at the collegiate level. She led the Big East in assists in her senior year, and ended her collegiate career as the all time leader at Providence College.

With no viable option of professional basketball at the time, Burke joined ESPN as an analyst.

Since then, she has broken barriers and become the first woman to commentate a men’s college basketball game and a New York Knicks game on both radio and television.

Nowadays, Burke is one of the most highly respected journalists in American basketball.

Current team USA coach and ESPN colour commentator Jeff Van Gundy has known Burke since his days as an assistant coach at Providence College.

“She’s the best, most versatile analyst and commentator at ESPN”, Van Gundy told Deadspin reporter Lyndsey D’Arcangelo.

“She does it all, great interviewer, commentator, studio analyst, everything. And she is an expert at it all, women’s and men’s college basketball, the NBA and the WNBA. She’s the LeBron James of sports casters. There’s no better broadcaster out there right now.”

There are other retired athletes who have had success in the media industry. Retired English cricket captain Michael Atherton has carved a polarizing career in the media. He has written for The Telegraph and The Times, and has worked for broadcast companies BBC, Channel 4 and Sky Sports.

For his outstanding work, he was awarded the Sports Journalist of the Year at the 2010 British Press Awards.

Burke and Atherton are not typical cases of retired athletes who have become journalists. The two have put in around 50 years of dedicated work following their sports careers.

While they may have used their names to get in to the industry, they have not rested on their laurels and have instead worked hard to get where they are today.

Athletes, media and fans respect them for their mixture of talents and unique take on sport.

They are journalists who just so happen to be former athletes.

And just as much as the world needs journalists to cover sport, it needs sports personalities in and around the media too.

Listening to a football game would be completely different if not for Brian Taylor or Billy Brownless. NBA coverage would be far less enjoyable without Shaq and Charles Barkley constantly goading each other.

Imagine watching cricket as a child and not hearing Bill Lawry shriek “Yes! Got him”.

These characters make sport. They are the reason we tune in every week and watch the same broadcast. Without them, sport would be incredibly different to watch, listen and read.

But they are not journalists.

Both parties are arguably as important to sport as one another, for very different reasons.

You can be both a retired player and a journalist.

But just because you are one, does not make you both.

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