AT the tender age of 51, Queensland Firebirds foundation player Karen Clarke is still running.
A fixture in the Firebirds midcourt for a decade (1997-2007), ‘Kaz’ or ‘Clarkey’ was admired for her superhuman fitness standards, cheeky sense of humour and humbleness.
Over 15 years later nothing has changed.
Based near Bribie Island, around 70km north of Brisbane, Kaz’s schedule revolves around her 11-year career as a firefighter and training for ultra marathons.
Her crew at Burpengary Fire Station know little of her past life in Firebirds colours, her reputation for grinding national opposition into the boards of a netball court, nor her ability to push past often debilitating injury and fatigue for her teammates.
At the age of 20, Clarke moved from her family home in Noosa to Brisbane with dreams of representing the Queensland Open netball team, as it was known before the Firebirds came into existence.
As a 25-year-old, after representing Queensland under-21s but never being selected at an open level, Clarke was named in the inaugural Queensland Firebirds team to line up in the Commonwealth Bank Trophy (CBT) competition.
“We were given two rolls of strapping tape a week, but I hated strapping my ankles so I did the whole ‘one band around the top and roll the sock up’ trick,” she said.
“We got paid $50 for a loss and $100 for a win, with the player of the match collecting about $50. I remember one year, we trained at Clayfield and I was living in Wynnum, so with the tolls factored in I definitely wasn’t making any money.”
But Clarke wasn’t playing to earn a living, she did that through putting in 14-hour days at Ingham’s chicken suppliers, which it turns out is her one real regret.
“I guess I thought I wasn’t smart enough to do anything else,” she said.
“I wish I had made the most of what they (Netball Queensland) had offered me but I had no self-confidence off the court. I was running at 3am in the morning and training until 9pm at night just trying to fit it all in.”
Eventually exhaustion and illness caught up with Clarke, ending her Firebirds career as a 36-year-old under the coaching reign of Vicki Wilson.
“My whole body in general couldn’t keep up,” she said.
“I was just exhausted but didn’t realise how exhausted until I stopped. I had glandular fever and Ross River fever for the whole of the last season but I didn’t know. I was getting tired and slow anyway, I knew it was time.”
It was the end of a decade of memorable performances on court, including making the CBT finals for the first time, and laughable antics off it.
“That night we made the semi-final in Melbourne, and we lost, it was also the best night,” Clarke said.
“Vicki went to bed and I kept ordering drinks under her room number. I hid from her the next day but she came around to my house in Wynnum. She said, ‘You put $400 on my tab, you’re now helping me move stuff’, because she was having some work done on her house.”
Wilson, who both played alongside and coached Clarke, also has a story or two to share about their time together at the elite level.
“Kazza got on with everyone,” Wilson said.
“I remember when we started doing the beep test. Kaz was so fit she’d be running beside me, but running backwards, saying, ‘Come on Vick’. She was always there for everyone and one of the best team members you could get. So humble and one of the toughest competitors as she never gave up and played right to the end.”
One of Wilson’s greatest challenges as a coach was to let Clarke know she wasn’t being offered a contract for the start of the 2008 new-look ANZ Championship.
“Her form had started to fall away, but as it turns out she ended up having glandular fever,” Wilson said.
“I remember we were playing West Coast Fever and leading with three minutes to go when Clarkey took a massive hit. We were all holding our breath and Fitzy (John Fitzgerald) ran out to ask her, ‘how are you?’ She replied with, ‘I’m ok, I can finish it.’ She had a cracked rib. That’s how tough Clarkey was, bringing us home with a cracked rib.”
From the ultimate team sport, to the ultimate team job, Karen Clarke the netballer is not dissimilar to Karen Clarke the firefighter.
“Having a good crew is like going to the pub with your mates, but you can’t drink,” she said.
“You’re together the whole time, and it’s that team thing I really like. Firies definitely replaced the team aspect of netball, as I can’t work without my crew.”
Clarke couldn’t work at all in 2020, after being diagnosed with a serious illness most commonly linked to smokers, drinkers and middle-aged men.
“I thought I had an ulcer on my tongue,” she said.
“It really hurt to eat chocolate and I thought, ‘I can’t have this in my life’. I went to the doc and saw a specialist who told me I had tongue cancer. It was during Covid when I had some of my tongue cut out, but it wasn’t enough so they cut more out, as well as lymph nodes in my neck.”
Clarke described it as the most pain she’s felt in her life.
“I couldn’t eat and I lost heaps of weight. I was given tablets for pain relief but I couldn’t swallow and couldn’t talk so I was texting people for help.”
Thankfully, perhaps owing chocolate some credit, Clarke’s cancer was discovered early and she’s now three years on from diagnosis and in the clear which means returning to her first love - running.
“I run for my mental health, particularly those longer runs where it comes down to your brain pushing you through the hard times,” she said.
Clarke’s longest running event to date, after starting with the Hawaii Marathon in 2009, is the 60km Kuranda to Port Douglas trail race.
She’s currently training, mostly solo, for this year’s Kosci 50 which is just shy of 800m of climbing during a 50km trail race winding around Mt Kosciuszko.
“I really like to train against people better than me, because that’s the way I improve,” she said.
“I like the hurt and fighting through the times you’re in pain, the times you don’t want to keep going.”
Netball Queensland (NQ) is formalising its connections with Former Firebirds through the establishment of the Former Firebirds Nest.
This initiative aims to connect NQ with former players, to continue to cultivate a sense of belonging and provide opportunities for all former Firebirds to strengthen a network with each other and the current Firebirds playing group.
