Everyone needs a Mark Pringle in their life.
Tragically the champion triathlete passed away while training in Dubai in 2009, but not before altering the trajectory of Sharon Finnan-White OAM’s life.
Finnan-White had spent six years attempting to ditch her Australian Diamonds ‘reserve’ tag to regain a position on the team when Pringle entered the picture.
“I was named in the squads after nationals and I’d go to the training camps where they’d read the names out in alphabetical order, get to ‘F’, and I’d miss out again,” Finnan-White said.
“What kept me motivated was being the only Indigenous girl in the squad for that period of time. I knew there was no one else and I was the role model for our younger girls coming through. I felt like I'd be failing them if I gave up. That's really the main reason I stayed, and because I still wanted to prove to myself that I could get back in as well.”
It was the 1990s and as a starting defender for the Sydney Sandpipers in the Commonwealth Bank Trophy, the top level Australian netball league, Finnan-White’s only weakness was a lack of peak fitness.
“Although I was still performing well, I felt like there was more I could give,” she said.
“I really had to do an honest evaluation of where I was at. That's when Mark came along and said, ‘right, we need to get you into shape and looking like an athlete and feeling like an athlete’. I thought I was doing enough but I needed to do more and he showed me how to push beyond the limits, beyond the pain barrier.”
The training regime was brutal, resembling an elite triathlon program, and unlike anything the girl from St George District Netball Association had ever seen.
“Mark was living in the Sutherland Shire and I was in St George,” Finnan-White said.
“He’d pick me up at 5am in the morning and take me to the pool to do three or four kilometres with the athletes. Then he had me running the sand hills at Cronulla Beach and I was almost vomiting, hating him and yelling at him. He’d say to me, ‘trust me, you can hate me all you want but you’ll thank me one day’, and I do, because there’s no way I would’ve pushed myself. I have a lot to thank him for.”
Finnan-White went on to play a crucial role in Australia’s victorious 1999 Netball World Cup campaign, before retiring following the 2000 Tri-Series against South Africa and New Zealand.
During this time, she relocated to the Gold Coast and subsequently accepted the captain’s role with the Queensland Firebirds.
“I really enjoyed it, and the girls I was playing with,” Finnan-White said.
“It was disappointing we weren’t as successful as we wanted to be. That got a bit disheartening at times, but the whole Firebirds environment really welcomed me. I was 34 at the time I retired. I could see the younger ones coming through and I really had to push myself to stay motivated, to keep playing. I think I was still playing reasonable netball but it was just hard work.”
As one of only two First Nations people to have represented Australia in netball up until that time, the expectations were sometimes crushing.
“It weighed me down a bit,” Finnan-White said.
“The media latched on to that fact and I got asked a lot of questions I didn't know how to answer. They thought, because I was Indigenous, that I knew everything there was to know in politics, society, everything. It was quite daunting because I didn't know the answers. God love Mark, he bought me all these educational books to read up on, ‘you need to know more about this stuff,’ he’d say.”
Finnan-White was raised in a non-Indigenous environment where her Indigenous culture wasn’t spoken of.
“Mum was part of the Stolen Generations,” Finnan-White said.
“Her and her ten siblings were removed from their family by the government of the day because that was the policy, to take Indigenous kids away and to integrate and assimilate them into white society. The culture for me was lost the minute mum was taken from her family, so she couldn't pass down any of that cultural knowledge to us because she didn't know herself as she was told to think white, act white, don’t practice your culture, don’t speak your language. So for me, getting all this attention as an Indigenous athlete and having to know all this stuff was really hard. I felt sometimes I was a bit of a fake because I had to pretend that I knew everything.”
Finnan-White’s role, during and post-playing days, in introducing netball to First Nations communities across the country has been immense, requiring the same dedication to the cause as her return to the Diamonds demanded.
“I worked for an Indigenous sporting organisation, called the National Aboriginal Sports Corporation, for eight years managing the Indigenous netball program,” she said.
“When I came to Queensland, I was living on the Gold Coast, then moved to Cairns and did a lot of work with Cairns Netball to set up some Indigenous programs and the Sharon Finnan Cup. I’m doing something now with Townsville to help them establish some player pathway programs as well.”
Finnan-White is also the driving force behind the Indigenous Diamonds Pathway Program, offering Indigenous players access to elite coaching in a culturally safe environment.
“I’m the Mark Pringle for them,” she said.
“These players need someone to push and motivate them, and I needed that too so I totally understand where they’re coming from. There’s not many of us. There’s Marcia Ella-Duncan, myself and Donnell Wallam at the elite level. I heard there were 17 Indigenous girls that made state teams for nationals this year from around the country, which is seven more than last year so something is working.”
Now at the age of 55, and comfortably established in Townsville, Finnan-White has the opportunity to reflect on a netball career spanning some 12 years and 20 Test caps.
“I’m most proud of the fact that I never gave up,” she said.
“With all the adversity; a knee reconstruction, missing selection for years, the challenges of not understanding what to say to the media, I could have easily walked away but I didn’t. Resilience comes from mum and my ancestors. They would’ve had to have had resilience to get through what they did in our history and I draw my strength from that.”
There is however one clear regret.
“Sometimes I feel like I want to pick up the phone and say, ‘thanks so much for what you did’, and I never got the opportunity to do that with Mark,” Finnan-White said.
“You never forget people like that. Amazing.”
