Mary Cholhok: Firebirds’ new star’s inspiring journey from South Sudan, Uganda, and to Australia

She’s a world star and one of the most exciting imports to grace Super Netball in the history of the competition, but Mary Cholhok had to make a ‘hard decision’ to ignite her career.

She’s star of the world game and one of the most exciting imports to grace Super Netball in the history of the competition.

But when the Queensland Firebirds last tasted premiership success almost a decade ago, netball was the furthest thing from Mary Cholhok’s mind.

Far from seeing herself as a paid professional in the world’s best league, Cholhok didn’t envision netball, or any sport, as a possible career option.

Pregnant with her son, Jackson, to whom she gave birth in 2017 — the year after the Firebirds last tasted premiership success — Cholhok was a self-described disappointment to the family that had fled war-torn South Sudan for a better life in Uganda.

New Firebirds import Goal Shooter Mary Cholhok at Kangaroo Point. Picture Lachie Millard

But making the decision to continue her studies and reconnecting with netball at university, led first to an opportunity to play in England, where she has racked up multiple scoring titles and premierships with Loughborough Lightning, before the constant attempts to lure her to the world’s best league in Australia were finally answered.

A 201cm goalshooter, Cholhok will be the tallest player ever to take the Super Netball court when she joins the Firebirds in Super Netball this season.

She wants to bring the club great success. To leave the team a better place than where she finds it — an outfit that has made the Super Netball playoffs just once, and not for the past six seasons.

But as has been the case for most of Cholhok’s life, it’s the journey that will matter.

It’s a journey that has led her from the war-torn country of her birth to the neighbouring African nation where she has become a hero and role model to many — and not just in the netball community.

New Firebirds import Goal Shooter Mary Cholhok has arrived in Brisbane. Picture Lachie Millard

It certainly hasn’t been without its challenges.

When she made her debut in England in 2019, she was unable to take son with her and for the first four years she played in the Super League, she did so with Jackson back in Uganda being cared for by her mother.

“It was a hard decision for me to take … as a mother to put yourself in that position,” Cholhok said.

“When I gave birth to my son, I was 20, I was quite a young mum and I had to enrol back to the university, and that’s how I got back into netball.”

Within a year she had been called into the Ugandan national team and another 12 months on she had won a Super League contract with Loughborough Lightning, arriving in England on a student visa while studying a business degree at Loughborough College.

Mary Nuba Cholhok in action for Uganda at the Vitality Netball Nations Cup. Picture: Getty Images for England Netball

“When that opportunity came for me to get a contract in Loughborough — which was a two-year contract — my mum couldn’t see me dropping it because of my son,” Cholhok said.

“She was like, ‘he’s going to be like my last-born and I’m going to take care of him. You go.’

“Obviously you get mum guilt missing all the little things, so it was hard for me but I had a very good (knowledge) that he was being taken care of.”

For four long seasons though, including during the locked down Covid years, Cholhok only saw her son Jackson for a few months at a time.

“Thank god for technology,” Cholhok said.

“To be on FaceTime and WhatsApp now and then when I could, that’s how I coped, really.”

NEW CHALLENGES BECKON

By the end of 2022, Cholhok, by then a premiership winner with Loughborough as well as a two-time winner of the league’s top scorer award, had gained a visa for Jackson, who spent the last two seasons with her in England - years in which she again topped the Super League scoring tally.

💡 The return of the NSL means one thing for certain...

The return of the Mary Cholhok lay-up ™️#NSL2024 l #SeeUsNowpic.twitter.com/rVvrN9CVdc

— Netball Super League (@NetballSL) February 17, 2024

He and Cholhok’s partner Jack have also made the most recent move with her, arriving in Brisbane last week after the 28-year-old completed commitments with the Ugandan team in the Netball Nations Cup.

While England’s top league is moving towards full professionalism, it’s still not a full-time vocation - or wage - for most players.

Arriving in Australia on an athlete visa though is something that blows the mind of the woman who still remembers fleeing her country of birth after the death of her father when she was aged just five or six, the hard yards her mother and uncle put into supporting the family and the disappointment they felt when Cholhok became pregnant so young.

“Having my son at the age of 20, with the South Sudanese background that I have, was a taboo,” Cholhok said.

“It was very hard. My family didn’t take it well but to come back from that to actually having a career in sport (is amazing).”

Mary Cholhok is a favourite of netball fans across the world. Picture Lachie Millard

Sport had been seen as a hindrance to Cholhok’s success at school, so when the girl her family had hoped would become a doctor, became pregnant, sport took much of the blame.

Cholhok though, says becoming pregnant so young forced her to mature quickly, take on responsibility and have the strength and resilience to forge her own path.

Among those proudest of the journey she has taken is her mother Rebecca.

“She’s so proud,” said Cholhok, who would love for her mother to be able to make the trek Down Under at some stage over the next two years she is contracted to the Firebirds to watch her play live.

“I don’t think she’ll see me on big stage (any time soon) but when she’s watching me on telly, she’ll be screaming ‘that’s my girl’.”

BLAZING TRAILS

Cholhok joins former Sunshine Coast Lightning goaler Peace Proscovia as the only Ugandan to have played Super Netball.

And she hopes she won’t be the last.

Like Jamaican Romelda Aiken-George who headed to Australia in 2008 to join the Firebirds, blazing a trail for the next generation of Jamaican players to follow, Cholhok would be proud if her legacy is more Ugandan players - and Africans in general - playing in the world’s best league.

Firebirds star Mary Cholhok hopes to inspire more Ugandans, and Africans in general, to netball. Picture: Lachie Millard

“If that happens, I’ll be the happiest person,” she said.

“I just want to see so many athletes succeed, and if that’s me being an inspiration, that’s a bonus for me.”

More than anything though, she wants them to see a strong and resilient woman who has made her own choices in life, a path she would love others to believe they can also tread.

“It’s very important. I’m here not just representing myself, I’m representing two communities - and two communities that are still very far (behind) with a lot of traditional beliefs,” she said.

“In South Sudan, there’s a lot of early childhood marriages because … that’s what our mothers did, and that’s what the ancestors did - and that’s the destiny of a girl child.

“But as a girl, you have a choice and you have a choice to say no … there’s no point living your life on behalf of someone (else).”

Originally published as Mary Cholhok: Firebirds’ new star’s inspiring journey from South Sudan, Uganda, and to Australia