Quad Series: Gretel Tippett makes her mark

Gretel Tippett is making people take notice with her stunning transition to be a vital member of the national team.

Gretel Tippett is coming off a 30-goal MVP performance against South Africa.

When Diamonds captain Caitlin Bassett fractured her forearm mere days out from the team’s season-opening match against South Africa last week, most of the attention surrounded benched veteran Victorian shooter Caitlin Thwaites.

But instead it was Queensland bolter Gretel Tippett who filled the gap with a 30-goal match MVP performance that underlined her transformation over the past 12 months to a vital member of the national team.

Tippett came to netball as a code-hopper after abandoning a promising basketball career in 2012. At that point she was a promising prospect with prodigious physical talents who could supposedly dunk a tennis ball.

After a stint in Sydney, she found success at the Queensland Firebirds, where she was taken under the wing of captain Laura Geitz and won two premierships as the support act alongside Jamaican shooter Romelda Aiken.

But Tippett played a decidedly unorthodox brand of netball, a 191 centimetre, athletic goal attack who rarely shot. Her two signature moves were a running layup and an arching no-look pass to Aiken that resembled the skyhooks popularised by 1980s basketball stars.

Diamonds coach Lisa Alexander has long been fascinated by Tippett’s potential as a goaler that could break the mould, and repeatedly backed in the Queenslander since her national debut in 2015 despite the intense frustration of large swathes of the netball community.

Those who know Tippett well paint the picture of a sensitive, intelligent and warm young woman who’s tight with her teammates and quick to win over strangers.

Alexander describes her as “a beautiful soul … who would never want to make anyone unhappy”. The coach still gets emotional when asked about the pain of watching Tippett struggle under the weight of fierce criticism.

“There’s great polarity from the views about Gretel from the netball mainstream public, some of them love her, some of them can’t stand her,” Alexander said, before taking a lengthy pause.

“It just makes me upset because she’s just a wonderful person, and she’s like my own daughter.”

Learning to tune out her detractors and listen to the coaches who trust her has been a significant driver of Tippet’s growth over the past 18 months.

“I used to always want to be a people pleaser, and now I’ve had to accept that I play differently and not to try and play like anyone else,” she explained.

The other key development for Tippett has been a retooled training regimen and the advice of former and current Diamonds coaches Marg Caldow and Megan Anderson. That’s allowed her to become a more active threat inside the goal circle.

Tippett was “unlucky” to miss out on selection for the 2018 Commonwealth Games, a particularly cruel twist given it was a rare tournament hosted on the Gold Coast where she grew up. But her recent run of form has placed the goaler firmly on track for a spot on this year’s World Cup team. Before then she needs to help the Diamonds navigate tricky Quad Series matches against New Zealand and England tonight and tomorrow morning AEDT time.