Diary Entry 20th June 2008
(50 days until Opening Ceremony)

Since the official announcement on Tuesday morning (17th) it has been a crazy week - media commitments followed by media commitments. Obviously because I am originally from the country, I’ve been bombarded with requests from the South-West - especially from my home town Collie. Mum and Dad said they can’t even walk outside or down town without somebody coming up to them and congratulating them. I’ve heard from people I haven’t heard from in years, old school friends and distant relatives. It really has been massive not only for myself and my family, but also for the Collie community.

The announcement was held at Orana Catholic Primary School. Besides the fact that it was extremely exciting to finally hear your name read out to be going to the ‘Olympics’, it was a lot of fun interacting with the school children and sharing our memorable moment. For me, along with a lot of other girls in the team it brought back so many memories of where it all started - ‘the good old days of school sport’ – I’m not that long out of school myself. It was Orana’s Olympic Day so hundreds of kids were outside taking part in games and activities. Activities ranged from relays, to corner spry, to tag, to rob the nest… I’m such a big kid so of course I joined in, but my competitive streak got the better of me in ‘rob the nest’, there was no holding back….you can view the day at the link below:

http://www.olympics.com.au/Portals/3/MediaCentre.html#/media/-1

No rest for the wicked though…it was straight to the WAIS Gym for our strength and conditioning session immediately after the announcement.  We’re quite blessed to have a fantastic Communications Manager who does so much of our media bookings; I doubt I’d have the time to look after it all myself.

Training as always is our first priority and so after the excitement had settled we had only one thing on our minds – one step closer to Beijing.  One theme of this weeks training program has been to keep the group fresh and united.  We spent an entire day out of our program base at the Perth Hockey Stadium, and instead were spoilt with the surrounds and views of the coast.  Yoga and our “Hockey School Meeting” (the term we as athletes use – as we’re constantly reviewing and being testing on the information we’re loaded with) was as the Swanbourne Life Saving Club.  We all welcomed the change – it can be at times incredibly tedious training, eating and learning in the one spot.  It also provided us the chance to organize our catch up post training on Friday morning.  This week we’re having a brunch at Burswood Park – as a group, more than ever we’ve all identified the need to casually interact outside the training environment – this is so important to our team dynamic, it’s all about having a balance = on-field and off-field.

It’s an honor to be recognized as an Olympian… and this is what this week has taught me!!! For our sport going to an Olympics is the pinnacle of our careers, no amount of World Cups, Champions Trophy’s or Commonwealth Games will ever be bigger than an Olympic Games …