Rugby Sevens star Charlotte Caslick opens up on Super W, Wallaroos and playing on to a fourth Olympics as a mother
She won Aussie hearts as a fresh-faced youngster steamrolling opponents on her way to Olympic gold. Now Charlotte Caslick wants to add mum to her list of titles on the way to a fourth Games.
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She shot to fame as a pigtailed kid who led Australia to rugby sevens gold in Rio but Charlotte Caslick has revealed she wants to compete at a fourth Olympics as a mother in Los Angeles.
Caslick has played at three Olympics for Australia but her experiences in Tokyo, where the Aussies were bundled out before the medal rounds, and Paris, where the women faltered on finals day after looking in medal form, failed to replicate the magical moments of the sport’s debut in 2016.
Already the most-capped women’s sevens player in history and the first Australian to score 150 tries on the world SVNS circuit, Caslick will be back in action this weekend in Vancouver, where the Aussie women will attempt to rack up their third win of the season.
But in a bid to find a new challenge, Caslick will switch lenses after this weekend, taking to the field for the Queensland Reds in the Super W where she will audition for a place in the Wallaroos’ team for the women’s XVs World Cup later this year.
Nine players from the sevens program have put their hands up to play Super W, initially in a two-game window between this weekend’s Vancouver SVNS World Series round and the next, in Hong Kong in late March.
Caslick though is keen to extend her stint with the Queensland Reds, taking the challenge of a XVs switch, where she would most likely play at fullback, extremely seriously.
“I just love the Queensland jersey. I love everything about it, so I’m pretty excited to play,” Caslick said.
“I went through high school when the Reds won the Super Rugby championship in 2011, so I got to watch that when they were at their peak.”
Getting out of the rinse and repeat of the sevens circuit that has been part of her life for the past decade is also likely to be the circuit-breaker she needs to get to a fourth Olympics.
“I’m hopefully going to play as many Super W games as I possibly can, so if I miss out on
sevens this season, I probably will prioritise getting some XVs exposure,” Caslick said.
“It’s important to revitalise yourself and experience new things so you don’t get caught up in feeling like it’s monotonous going to the same place every single day for over 10 years.
“It will be good for me just to do something new and be able to freshen up a little bit and then if I do get to LA, that would be great (and) there’s obviously the (XVs) World Cup in Australia too in 2029.
“There’s a lot of exciting things coming up that I would love to be a part of but at this stage I just want to enjoy the next few years of my rugby and put the enjoyment part of it and myself first.”
Putting herself first could include starting a family with fiance Lewis Holland, former men’s sevens captain and two-time Olympian.
“If I get to LA I hope that I get there with a baby in that time period,” she said.
“But obviously it’s one of those things that you just have no control over really.”
The hectic schedules of Caslick and Holland - they own a property in Queensland where Holland raises Angus cattle, and he also acts as a rural contractor, working remotely - mean getting married is not an immediate priority.
But Caslick is turning 30 in just over a fortnight and understands that she - and the Rugby Australia programs she’s a part of - need to be thinking about the needs of women enjoying longer and longer professional sporting careers.
“If I do hopefully have a baby at some stage, I hope that we, as Rugby Australia, and everyone can maybe use it as a bit of education around how it all works because a lot of us are just blind - we just don’t know what we’re going into.
“And we don’t get much education around that aspect of things - fertility and PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome) and all of these things that are quite common in female athletes but we don’t speak about them enough.
“Hopefully if I can have some sort of influence on that at some stage in my career, I would love that.”
Certainly, Caslick will be backed by Rugby Australia, which has in place maternity policies not just around leave while pregnant but returning to play.
“(Rio Olympian) Emilee Cherry obviously had a baby and came back and played after that, (retiring in 2020 after the Tokyo Games were postponed) and then (fellow Rio gold medallist) Alicia Quirk also had a baby and played after,” Caslick said.
“There’s definitely the policies in place, we just haven’t used them due to the fact that no one’s really had a baby and stayed in the program for a long time afterwards.”
Just how long Caslick stays in the game is undecided for now.
But she’s talking about the XVs World Cup in Australia in 2029 and if she plays on until then, a farewell Olympics in her home town in 2032 would be a fitting farewell.
Longtime mentor Tim Walsh, who coached Caslick at both the Rio and Paris Games, told Code Sports last year that he would not put anything past the superstar.
“I’ve known Charlotte since she was 17, so we do talk about lots of different things in her career and if that’s something that she wants to do, which she certainly does, I would back her to be able to do anything,” he said.
“We go into a lot of details and science about how to perform and it includes going into post-partum, into having a baby and coming back into the game because you don’t want to lose that IP (intellectual property) and that expertise because, I think in our opinion, it may even make them a better person and a better player.”
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Originally published as Rugby Sevens star Charlotte Caslick opens up on Super W, Wallaroos and playing on to a fourth Olympics as a mother
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