TeamGirls
The pro athletes’ guide to building resilience
by Katrina Sichlau
Team Girls is dedicated to fostering and promoting girls’ participation in sport. It’s about girls supporting girls, building up their confidence, and knowing they’re stronger when they stand together – on and off the court.
- This article was originally published on Body+Soul.
- Permission obtained from those interviewed.
When it comes to sport, winning is usually the aim of the game. But losing, being sidelined or facing setbacks such as injuries can have benefits too. They can help athletes develop resilience that extends way beyond the playing field.
Suncorp Super Netball stars Reilley Batcheldor, Sharni Lambden and Elmeré van der Berg have all had their fair share of challenges on the road to becoming professional sportswomen. Here are some of the lessons they’ve learnt along the way.
Walk your own path
Batcheldor, a goal shooter and goal attack for the Melbourne Mavericks, says rupturing her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) at 17 was a tough blow. A few years later, however, she scored her first professional contract with Sunshine Coast Lightning – only to tear her ACL again. This time the injury impacted her more mentally than physically.
“I had so many doubts rehabbing it the second time because I thought, ‘It’s failed me once, who’s to know if it’s going to happen again?’,” she recalls.
“I was like, ‘There goes another year of crucial development’, watching all my friends getting starting spots, being named in Diamonds (national) squads and things like that, so a huge part of it was comparing myself to other people my age and how they were tracking in the netball world.
“But my knee had another journey for me to take.”
Photo: Joanna Margiolis, Netball Australia.
Batcheldor has since learnt that everyone’s road to success looks different and setbacks aren’t necessarily as detrimental as she’d thought they would be. She feared her first ACL injury would take her out of the netball pathway.
Now Batcheldor takes setbacks step by step and puts herself, and what her body needs, first.
“I kind of look at it in a process format rather than jumping to conclusions and fixating on the outcome,” she says.
Focus on what you can control
Sharni Lambden, who plays wing defence for the NSW Swifts, also had a difficult start to her career. After being offered a contract at 18, the offer was later rescinded, leaving her distraught.
“The way I ended up dealing with it was just bottling it all up and I think it made it so much worse. I didn’t want to speak about it. I was spiralling a bit,” Lambden recalls.
Fortunately, she was offered a training partner position shortly after, a role that involves training with the team but only playing if someone is injured or sick.
After six years as a training partner, Lambden decided to take a break from netball and found full-time work as a primary school teacher.
“I was plateauing and I felt like netball wasn’t my path, so I wasn’t going to force it. That’s why I decided I needed to take a step back,” Lambden says.
“I was OK with how much I gave to netball and how much I put myself out there to try and have a good crack, and I think it’s so funny that as soon as I stepped away, that’s when that opportunity came.”
A few short months later, the Melbourne Vixens called on Lambden to cover an injured player. She ended up playing five games for them, which led to a full-time contract with the NSW Swifts the following season.
Photo: Narelle Spangher, Netball NSW.
The experience has made her stronger, in both sport and life. Instead of dwelling on what’s gone wrong, Lambden concentrates on what she can control.
“I think failure in netball has made me more resilient. If things don’t always go to plan, it’s OK. You’ve just got to move on. When I face challenges outside of sport, I don’t panic as much. I just try to approach it the same way: keep learning from it and keep moving forward,” she says.
“Now I move on quickly. I obviously still care, I just don’t let it define me. I focus on what I can control, and what I just control is my attitude and my effort.”
Find the positives
South African goal-shooter Elmeré van der Berg has joined the Adelaide Thunderbirds for the 2026 Suncorp Super Netball season. Having left home at 18 to go to university, and then to England to play in the UK’s Netball Super League for two years, Elmeré has developed her own tools for battling failure.
The secret, she says, is finding the positives in every situation – whether it’s a bad game, a devastating ankle injury, or simply life giving her lemons.
“I think it’s important to be able to find the positives in something bad, because otherwise you can get stuck and only focus on the negatives,” van der Berg says.
Australian Sports Commission AusPlay data shows many girls drop out of organised sport during their teenage years. When Suncorp Team Girls was launched in 2017, a clear aim of the initiative was to encourage and support girls to stay involved in sport, building invaluable life skills through participation.
Photo: Joanna Margiolis, Netball Australia.
Van der Berg says as a teenager she went through a period where she wanted to stop playing netball.
She could never hang out with her friends because she was training from 2pm to 6pm, with school from 7am to 2pm.
“It was just my whole life at that stage. I wanted to be the typical student, but I’m glad I didn’t stop,” she says.
“Looking back now, if I stopped then I would have been in a whole different place to where I’m now – and I would have had a lot of regrets as well.
“I think there’s a lot of value you can take out of sports, but my biggest one is discipline and a never-give-up attitude.”
Similarly, Lambden credits netball with teaching her discipline, resilience, teamwork and communication.
“I think there’s a lot that it’s helped me with, and I think it’s really shaped me to be a better person, as well as a better athlete,” she says.
“It’s given me confidence, structure, and opportunities I’d never thought I’d have.”
Read more :
- What women in sport prove every day: lessons from 3 elite athletes | Suncorp
- Life Drills : Life Drills | Suncorp
- Support Crew Stories: The Team Behind the Diamonds: Support Crew Stories | Suncorp
- Committed to keeping girls in the game: About Us | Team Girls | Suncorp
The information is intended to be of general nature only. Subject to any rights you may have under any law, we do not accept any legal responsibility for any loss or damage, including loss of business or profits or any other indirect loss, incurred as a result of reliance upon the information. Please make your own enquiries.
