AFLW: All the news out of Round 6 of the 2021 season
Struck by lightning while at work last year, Brisbane Lion Jessica Wuetschner has revealed a harrowing mental health battle in the wake of her near-death experience.
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Brisbane Lions AFLW gun Jessica Wuetschner has revealed that she didn’t know if she could return to the field this season as she continues to battle the mental demons from being struck by lightning.
But the support of her loving partner, parents and coach, Craig Starcevich, have helped her take that next step back after a harrowing 12 months since the workplace incident.
The 28-year-old has opened up to The Courier-Mail about her mental health ahead of the Lions’ clash with GWS on Saturday.
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Wuetschner, who works as a stevedore at the Port of Brisbane docks, was in a crane last January holding a metal pole when she was struck by lightning in the early hours of the morning.
While she was cleared of any physical injuries or burns, the talented forward has since struggled with her mental health to the point where she almost walked away from football ahead of the 2021 season.
“I wasn’t sure that I was ready to come back to footy at this level,” she said.
“I had discussions with my parents, my partner and Craig about potentially not even playing this season, just purely because of the incident and my mental health.
“I didn’t have that push or drive anymore … ever since (the lightning strike) I haven’t felt like the player I was before so it’s been something I struggled with.”
At the time, Wuetschner described the electrocution as a “buzzing” feeling and said she was “lucky to be alive” but also “really scared I could have not been here”.
And it is that sentiment that has plagued her ever since.
Wuetschner, who is on antidepressants and has been seeing a psychologist since last January, said her medications can take away the natural highs she used to feel when playing football and the biggest issues she has struggled with are overcoming the fear from the incident and trying to return to normality.
“Everything was a bit difficult after that,” she said of the lightning strike.
“It was all just a really tough period of time.
“In the first three to six months afterwards, I lived in a bubble of fear. That was something that wasn’t allowing me to get out and do every day things.
“I struggle still with trying to get back to who I was. Working full-time is something I still can’t do and I struggle with the commitments and work entailed in AFLW.
“After Round 1 last year, I had two games off and that was purely because I couldn’t get myself on the field. I had my mum fly up from Tassie to be with me.
“That whole season I was very numb and I didn’t have any feeling towards it.”
But with some gentle pushing from her partner Louise, her parents and Starcevich, Wuetschner re-signed with the Lions, completed pre-season and has managed a successful return to the field.
She said all four have been instrumental in her road to recovery, particularly Louise who she was separated from for the majority of 2020.
From the UK, Louise went home when COVID-19 broke out last year and was only granted
permission to return to Australia last month for a long-awaited reunion with Wuetschner.
But even through that separation, the two women were each other’s greatest supporters.
“My partner was a huge part of me getting through that period where I was in my bubble,” she said.
“There wasn’t a day where we didn’t speak. Whether it was for five hours or five seconds, every time we spoke she felt like my safe place, even though she was so far away.
“I’m definitely in a much better place than I was even a month ago. For me this year is more so about giving everything I can for the team.
“We have a group that could contend for the flag so rather than putting too much pressure to play to my highest ability, I’m just there trying to play my role within the club more than anything … whatever they need me to do, on the field, off the field.”
THE COMPLEX ANATOMY OF ‘PAXY’S’ MODERN-DAY AFLW MULLET
It was right in the middle of Melbourne’s three-month COVID-19 lockdown last year when Karen Paxman finally found the courage to change something that had been a constant for most of her life: her hairstyle.
When on the football field, the Melbourne veteran would typically have her hair slicked back into a small bun; left to fall below her shoulders when away from it.
Not anymore. Now it’s a complicated array of lengths, fashioned into a modern-day mullet.
The 32-year-old had been thinking about a change for some time – not necessarily going with the mullet – but certainly cutting her hair short, dreaming of the ease of rubbing a bit of wax through it and off she goes.
It took pandemic isolation and the ensuing slowing down of life – as well as a bit of encouragement from loved ones, as well as the COVID-safe bubble of hairdressing friend – for her to finally do it.
“It’s got a bit of attention, I didn’t expect it, but I can see why, it’s a bit of a change,” she says.
She admits there were two people who were genuinely shocked by the change: her mum and dad, June and Alan, who were first given a glimpse of their daughter’s new style over a Zoom catch up.
“They are pretty relaxed and open-minded people but I think it was a shock, because I’m obviously theirs, but they’re used to it now and overall most people think it’s pretty all right,” Paxman says.
“In terms of time spent doing hair, it certainly saves me a lot.”
Those spared extra moments are important for the defensive midfielder who continues to thrive in the AFLW.
Paxman has played 33 games in five years, kicked 11 goals and averaged 20 disposals. She’s one of only two footballers who have been named in every AFLW All-Australian team since the league’s inception in 2017, alongside North Melbourne’s Emma Kearney. Last year, she was honoured with All-Australian captaincy.
She’s part of a legion of over-30s in the AFLW who were denied junior footy as kids.
Alongside the likes of Crow Erin Phillips, 35, Giant Cora Staunton, 39, Kearney, 31, fellow Demon Daisy Pearce, 32, she’s one of the veterans who continue to impress amid a generational change occurring in the league, with teenagers now coming into the competition having followed the elite pathways now available to girls.
Paxman, who didn’t start playing footy until age 16 after a teacher spied her kicking the footy with the boys at lunchtime and suggested a local league, says it’s amazing to see the likes of Phillips and Staunton continue to smash out amazing performances.
“There is no precedent at the moment for women’s AFL, so who knows how long we can push our bodies out till,” she muses.
“A lot of us haven’t been playing and bashing and crashing since we were five or six like the men’s AFL players … but now being in an elite environment and having access to the best treatments, education around injury prevention, it will be interesting to see how long we can keep going.”
In 2021, “Paxy” is sitting 11th overall in the AFLW Coaches Association AFLW Champion Player of the Year vote, and according to statisticians at Champion Data, she’s posting career-high average disposals (23) and second-highest disposal efficiency (63 per cent). She’s ranking seventh in the league overall for disposals.
Could it be the hair?
If it is, she’ll need all its power on Saturday night when Melbourne takes on St Kilda at Casey Fields, with their season on the line and looking to break their two-game losing streak and get back inside the Top 6.
Paxman laughs at the suggestion her new hairstyle could make her the trendsetter of the women’s league.
“I actually had it done and then afterwards I was watching telly and the AFL was on and there were a lot of blokes with mullets, little did I know they were coming back (in fashion), so it was good timing.”
Trendsetter or not, the thing with major changes like a noticeable new haircut is they can be good for the soul.
“A lot of your identity can be wrapped up in your hair and when I got it cut it did take a bit of courage to do it and you wonder what other people will think, but I just thought: ‘Don’t worry about what people think’.”
Originally published as AFLW: All the news out of Round 6 of the 2021 season
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