Erin Phillips’ twin passions — two cities, two babies and two sports
AFTER the attention over THAT kiss with her wife at the AFLW best and fairest awards, footballer and basketballer Erin Phillips is relishing family time with the couple’s twins.
VIC News
Don't miss out on the headlines from VIC News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
ON the basketball court and footy field, she’s known for her fierce athleticism and competitive drive, but there are two things that melt Erin Phillips’ heart.
Their names are Brooklyn and Blake, the code-hopping sport star’s gorgeous twin babies.
It’s been a momentous 12 months for the 32-year-old. Not only did she and wife Tracy Gahan welcome daughter Brooklyn and son Blake in November, she was the standout star of this year’s inaugural AFL Women’s competition.
Phillips’ AFLW achievements in such a short time frame — and despite a 17-year absence from the sport — are impressive.
MARK ROBINSON: THE KISS THAT WENT AROUND AUSTRALIA
She co-captained the Adelaide Crows to a premiership, kicked goal of the year from 60m out, was nominated for mark of the year, was best on ground in the AFLW’s historic Grand Final, was named vice-captain of the All-Australian team, won the AFLW Players’ Association’s most valuable player and took out best and fairest medals at club and league level.
Phillips and Gahan also unwittingly became poster girls for same-sex relationships when the picture of their celebratory kiss after Phillips’ AFLW best and fairest win in March was splashed far and wide.
Once the footy season was over, the couple headed back to the US, where Phillips has played professional basketball in the tough WNBA league for the past nine seasons.
In May, though, she retired from the competition, having won two championships with Indiana in 2012 and Phoenix in 2014.
Last year, she co-captained the Dallas Wings, but will stay on as the team’s director of player and franchise development on a year-by-year contract.
Phillips rejects reports she was dumped by Dallas as a player.
“It wasn’t a case of Dallas turning their back on me. I wasn’t let go,” she says from her US base.
“I was ready to retire because of how hard juggling everything was getting.
“I’d been playing the AFLW season and enjoyed it and loved being back home after playing overseas for so long. I was just ready to have a break somewhere in the year of playing sport.
“Let’s face it, I was turning 32 (in May) and didn’t know how many seasons of AFLW I had, but I did know I wanted to give it my absolute best shot physically.”
PHILLIPS WAIVED BY WNBA’S DALLAS WINGS
Having re-signed with Adelaide for the 2018 AFLW season, Phillips, Gahan and the twins will return to Australia in September for the pre-season. Phillips will also take a more active role off the field in promoting the women’s league and will join the AFL as a high-performance coach, working with under-16 and under-18 boys’ and girls’ academy teams.
“The development stage I’m really interested in,” she says. “These two roles I have in Dallas and Australia are similar. I feel like I couldn’t have gotten any luckier. You have a new appreciation when you have kids.
“Football was my life when I was younger. I had a balloon always blown up attached to the back of the couch, so when it was raining and I couldn’t go outside, I’d jump off the back of the couch trying to take hangers. I was that crazy kid who lived and breathed footy.
“I look back and think how hard it would’ve been for my parents to sit me down and tell me it’s not going to happen (professionally).
“It would’ve broken their hearts. I’m grateful that I never have to tell my kids that.”
Phillips was born in Melbourne when her footballer dad Greg Phillips, a Port Adelaide legend of 343 SANFL games, played 84 games with Collingwood across four seasons during the VFL days in the ’80s.
The family returned to Adelaide when Erin was 18 months. It was a sporty household, with Phillips and older sisters Rachel and Amy (who is married to Hawthorn stalwart Shaun Burgoyne) between them doing Little Athletics and playing footy, netball, tennis and basketball. Phillips played Aussie rules religiously until the age of 13.
“Every Sunday morning, I’d be up at the crack of light and getting ready (in my uniform), even though I wasn’t playing until 11am. I used to get butterflies the night before. I just loved it,” she says.
But with no formal avenue to pursue football further, her parents strategically encouraged her to pursue basketball. She remembers being fouled out at one of her first games.
“I was this raw footy player trying to turn basketball player,” she says. “At 13, I couldn’t really understand why I couldn’t keep playing football. Who cares that I’m a girl?
“You don’t really comprehend why you can’t continue. I remember sitting on the bench (at basketball) and thinking, ‘Who wants to play this? You can’t tackle or touch anyone.’ But I had really good support and coaches who helped me develop my skills.
“From then I started to enjoy basketball and was fortunate to continue falling into it.”
Phillips played three seasons in Australia’s Women’s National Basketball League for Adelaide Lightning, for European clubs in Poland, Israel and Slovakia, and those nine WNBA seasons, for Connecticut Suns in 2006, then Los Angeles, Indiana, Phoenix and Dallas.
A career highlight was meeting former US president Barack Obama during a White House visit in 2013 after her title win with Indiana.
“We had to send our passports for background checks long before the visit, but clearly I have a good record because I met him,” Phillips says with a laugh.
“He was so, so cool. Very personable and charming and funny. Just normal. I felt like he wanted to hang out with us all day and shoot hoops but then he had to go and, you know, fix the world. It was a massive highlight of winning that championship.”
Playing for Australia’s women’s basketball team, the Opals, Phillips won silver at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and Commonwealth Games gold in 2006. However, the Opals’ disappointing tilt at the Rio Games last year — knocked out in the quarter-finals and missing out on a medal for the first time since 1992 — hit Phillips hard, influencing her decision to retire from basketball at league level.
However, she is still eligible to play internationally, leaving the door open to compete at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.
“After Rio and that disappointment, it was really hard to come back to basketball again, and football couldn’t have really come at a better time and took my mind off it all,” she says. “It was completely new and different and exciting and something I’d always wanted to do.”
She returned to Aussie rules for that stellar debut season, despite a long 17 years between kicks. It’s testament to her drive to succeed, says brother-in-law Burgoyne.
“Everything Erin has achieved has come from her hard work and determination,” he says. “Once she sets her mind to something, she won’t stop until she’s succeeded. It’s a credit to her.”
Phillips will continue to divide the year between the US and Australia, lucky enough to have support in both homes bases — her family in Adelaide and Gahan’s family in Dallas.
Phillips met California-born, Dallas-raised Gahan, 37, about a decade ago when they both played for Adelaide Lightning. They married in 2014, eloping to Hawaii’s surf-soaked Maui.
“We wanted to go on holiday but thought it would be a good time to elope,” Phillips says. “In my schedule, I never had a big enough break to plan anything big. It was good fun.”
In November, Gahan gave birth to Brooklyn and Blake in Dallas.
They were conceived via IVF, but the couple prefer to keep the finer details private. The twins are, luckily, good travellers, sleeping the entire long-haul flight to Australia from Dallas when only eight weeks old.
“Blake’s very laid-back and chilled and Brooklyn’s more rowdy, but they’re both such good kids,” Phillips gushes. “Very easy babies and happy, and want to be around people.
“They rarely cry unless they want something.”
Phillips says motherhood has taught her to be less selfish, more patient and to expect the unexpected.
“I was so routine (driven) and everything had to be this way pre-game and in training. I had to have proper sleep. It wasn’t OCD but I had to do it,” she says.
“Now, having kids it’s like, if I eat at this time, who cares? I’d usually have the same bread roll pre-game. Now whatever’s in the cupboard is fine. I’ve let go of that side of me.
“I take sport less seriously because I know it’s not the end of the world if you play badly or lose a game. Whatever happens, when I come home, I’m a mum and I’m happy and that’s the most important thing.
“When my dad used to come home from games, he was disappointed if the team had lost, but he’d always engage with us kids and play with us.
“He’d never bring that home.”
Gahan would like five children, but Phillips isn’t so sure. She’s happy adding one more to the brood and says they might start trying “maybe sometime next year”.
Phillips is happy to embrace being a positive role model, from a sporting perspective or same-sex unions.
She’s had boyfriends in the past, including a two-year relationship with Richmond footballer Ivan Maric.
“You should love whoever you want to love,” Phillips says. “If I can be a positive role model to anyone, that’s great. It doesn’t matter if they’re gay, straight, transgender, different culture. It’s a wonderful thing.
“I’m not the kind of person who really comes out politically angry. I’m more that by living my life, that is Tracy and I being open and being who we are, that’s more than enough. I’ll always encourage any kid to do that. My parents let me be who I was.
“We’re just being ourselves.”
Which is why the attention after “the kiss” at the AFLW best and fairest was unexpected.
“I kiss Tracy every day — goodbye, hello — in my daily routine. In Australia you do it and it’s on the front of every paper. It’s funny (that) it’s news but it’s been a great way to open discussion. It was never for a political gain, though — it’s my life, it’s my daily routine.
“My teammates in America thought (the reaction) was hilarious really. We’ve just been ourselves through one AFLW season and one small kiss just blew up but we’ll continue to be who we are.”
The couple are still somewhat embarrassed to tell friends and colleagues Stateside that gay marriage isn’t legal in Australia.
“People ask why we didn’t get married in Australia and when I tell them it’s illegal, they don’t believe me,” Phillips says.
“They’re blown away. They see Australia as an advanced country.
“Hopefully, it changes soon for many couples in Australia. It is unfortunate. But at the same time, I don’t go back to Australia and feel like my marriage means nothing.
“We’re married and no government law will make me feel any different. From a legal standpoint for people who do want to get married in Australia, it’s a basic human right. It’s got to change. I can’t see it not changing.”
Now without the rigours of playing sport year round, Phillips is looking forward to many things. But not in a super-disciplined, life-mapped-out kind of way any more.
“I’m just looking forward to life,” she says matter of factly. “I used to be someone who set five-year goals and now I’m very much wanting to enjoy every day.
“Before I used to count down until the next thing that happened and the next thing and before I knew it, my 20s were gone.
“I look forward to watching my kids grow up and hopefully one day Brooklyn and Blake will be able to play footy under the mother-daughter/mother-son rule. That’d be pretty cool.”
‘Angels’: Hero Coles workers save mum’s life
A mother of three has opened up on how her life was saved after she suddenly collapsed while doing a routine supermarket shop.
Wildlife and traffic fears over music festival
Wildlife advocates fear a weekend music festival in central Victoria will endanger native animals including rescued joeys.