Gretel Bueta grew up on the Gold Coast playing everything she could get her hands on. She signed her first professional basketball contract at 17, played three junior world championships and was named WNBL Rookie of the Year. Then she got glandular fever, stopped enjoying it and walked away from the sport entirely. Three months later she started playing netball socially with school friends, and did not make the district team. She went on to play more than 100 games for the Queensland Firebirds and over 50 for the Diamonds, won Commonwealth Games gold and the Liz Ellis Diamond as the best player in Australian netball, and came back after her first child playing some of the best netball of her life. She is now a mother of three. Grateful she came in and talked about all of it.

In this episode Gretel and I discuss what happened when she came back to netball after having Bobby and found she was hungrier than she had ever been, why she decided she would either come back and be the best or not come back at all, burning out at 17 and her parents telling her to go work at the local bank and be happy, the netball trial she did not get picked for, how trying to play the perfect game cost her a Commonwealth Games, the quote she used to force selection, the 15 minutes a day nobody ever saw, her mum running the house as the family CEO, and whether motherhood is harder than professional sport.

For more just like this:

#191 Charlotte Caslick: 3x Olympian Rugby 7s Player on Training Through Pregnancy & Why Trying Hard Is Cool | Apple | YouTube

#33 Allie Smith: Swifts Cult, Perfectionism and Building Confidence | Apple | YouTube Another netballer on perfectionism, and the New South Wales Swifts, the club Gretel played for in 2014.

#27 Kelsey Browne: Journey with Body Image, Clinical Depression, and a Glass Half Full Perspective | Apple | YouTube A former professional netballer on what the sport took out of her.

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