Plan B

Posted on 25 August, 2017

No matter how perfectly your ducks are in a row, life can always throw you a curveball. So what do you do when your carefully planned future goes to pieces?

The struggle of an athlete’s journey to stay in peak physical condition is as exhaustive as is mentally taxing. But add in a debilitating injury at the beginning of a professional career and you have Jess Bibby, who at 20 years old suffered a catastrophic back injury just before she was due to start her professional career in the Women’s National Basketball League.

“As a 20-year-old playing my first WNBL team in Melbourne I was still learning about how to lift weights properly,” she explains.

For Jess, it was a costly mistake.

“I deadlifted incorrectly and ruptured multiple discs in my back.”

As Jess is quick to point out, back injuries are common and some settle quickly while others tend to hang around.

“Initially it settled and I got drafted to the WNBA to New York City but it flared up on me over there.”

For the next 12 months, Jess battled with severe problems but her desire to keep her professional career was too strong to let her stop playing and give her back to rest it needed.

Jess Bibby

“When you’re that age you’re invincible and nothing is ‘long term’,” she says drily.

“In 2002 I went back to the States for preseason number two and in literally the first session I dove on a loose ball, fell on it and couldn’t get up.”

“That was it. I knew straight away I wasn’t going to be able to play for a while.”

After four years of different types of physical treatments and surgical consults, Jess’ back had deteriorated so badly that she couldn’t cough or sneeze without holding onto something to keep her upright.

“It got to the point where it was too severe for conventional surgery and then we found a surgeon from the States who was doing some experimental surgery in Australia,” says Jess.

However, Jess had reached her limit mentally and had been looking forward to using the last of her earnings from playing in the United States to fund a trip around Europe, travelling and indulging her other passion—watching tennis.

“But at the same time, this surgical option came up,” she says. “Because it was experimental it was going to cost me everything I had and there was no guarantee that it was going to work. So I had to choose.”

Jess’ surgeon was optimistic about her chances of what seemed like a full recovery and said he could have her back playing sport in 12 months.

Jess decided that her quality of life (and the potential to pursue her career again) was worth the money and risk.

A year on, she was back playing basketball, but the challenges didn’t stop there. An injury 18 months later saw her back in surgery with another year of rehabilitation.

The road to recovery is never easy but the road back to pro sport from four years out and minimal physical activity in that time could be described as sadistic. But not to Jess.

“I had a contract to go back to my team in Melbourne but when Graffy [Carrie Graf, then coach of the Canberra Capitals] came calling…for her to have faith in me, wanting me to play for her after playing a year and a half in six…” The happiness is still present in Jess’ voice as she recalls the conversation.

“If you’re ever going to have an opportunity to go outside your comfort zone this was it so that’s what led me to Canberra.”

Jess knew that she couldn’t bear another injury and another 12 months of rehabilitation, so she made herself a promise.

“I made a vow that I was going to be the most conditioned athlete in the WNBL to make sure I never had any major flare up ever again,” she explains.

But Jess was more than that. Her time with the Capitals saw her rise to the ranks of Captain, playing a total of 394 WNBL games before her retirement in early 2016. When she tells me that she played 10 years without missing a game because of her back, the pride in her voice is inescapable.

But Jess’ basketball retirement didn’t signify the end. Late last year, it was announced that Jess would swap her baby blue for flame orange as a new recruit for the GWS Giants as part of the new Women’s AFL League to begin playing in early 2017.

“I would be lying if I said I wasn’t concerned when I signed with the Giants,” Jess says. “There was a little voice in my head saying ‘if you survived Basketball, can your back survive footy?’

So did it? Well, sort of.

“The start of the third week of preseason – we were just getting stuck into it. I was really excited to learn as many skills and drills and terminology as I can before the season starts,” she says. I can barely stand to hear what I know is coming.

“Week three of the pre-season one of the girls stood on my hand wearing football boots.”

Jess suffered four fractures and two ruptured tendons from the accident and was only cleared to play full contact two days before the first game of the season.

“The doctor that cleared me said ‘you’re going to have a sore hand for six months’,” she says ruefully.

To add insult to grievous injury, a hand specialist then confirmed that the hand had not been set properly and therefore Jess would likely need surgery.

“After all my back battles – to keep it in such good condition – to then have this happen…this was one of the main reasons I’m pulling the pin,” she explains.

Although this year’s much-loved competition will be her last, Jess can see the bright side to retirement.

“I’m 38 in August and the idea of having to spend another Canberra winter flogging myself running around ovals to get myself footy-conditioned – I couldn’t imagine anything worse!” she says, laughing.

“I loved every second of it, it was an amazing experience. [If I were] five years younger I would be wanting to see how much I could evolve and learn as a footballer.”

So what now for Jess? Teaching and coaching come naturally to her – her infectious enthusiasm for both sports is obvious – so her future will likely be teaching others to pursue their goals with the same dogged determination. That, and supporting the exciting future of women’s sport, of course.

“My somewhat creaky body is ready to put its feet up and cheer on as much women’s sport as I can,” she laughs.

And her advice to others who suffer physical setbacks?

“My attitude to everything is that anything is possible. I’ve had the opportunity to live through being told ‘no’. I’m a five-foot-seven basketballer who suffered severe back injury – there should have been no chance for me to have been in the positions I played in.”

“Every person experiences some form of setback in their life, but it’s having the attitude to never say die. If you love something enough you’ll leave no stone unturned. Regardless of setbacks, if you live and breathe it, you give yourself every chance to succeed.”

~

Tim Gavel and wife Dr Jenny Andrew were at high points in their respective careers— she was as a consultant and him a well-known ABC Radio sports reporter—when they found themselves having to rethink their future plans. The family they had envisioned themselves eventually starting was just not going to happen.

“I had my own business at that stage and had just finished studying my PhD in 1997 and Tim as always coming and going with the ABC,” explains Jenny.

Kids hadn’t factored in their busy, globetrotting lifestyles until they realised in their late 30s that perhaps they may have missed their window.

When I meet Tim and Jenny, we sit in their sunny lounge room as two dogs snuffle around my feet. Family pictures are scattered between copious amounts of books on the shelves because the couple did eventually have the family they desired, just not in the way they might have imagined.

“Time was running out in terms of age – we were both heading towards 40,” says Tim.

With this in mind, Tim and Jenny began to look at broader options for becoming parents, looking into adoption on the recommendation of a friend.

“It didn’t bother me either way if our parenting was with biological children or people that we adopted, because it’s the same,” explains Jenny.

Jenny, Skinny, Tim and Eksie

But the road to adoption is well known for being difficult to navigate and paved with long waiting times, so they knew they had to revaluate their careers and opportunities if they were to take this path.
“Towards 2002 there were opportunities to move and we had to make a decision on what we wanted to do – was it really staying in Canberra and perusing the adoption process?” Tim explains. The answer was yes.

The couple began the adoption process in 2002 and began by contacting the ACT Government who would then deem them suitable as adoptees. The overall process took two-and-a-half years and Jenny and Tim say that while it was far longer than the conventional process of parenthood, it was a positive in hindsight.

“At the time it seemed like an insurmountable hurdle, it seemed like ‘is it ever going to happen?” says Tim. “We’d become quite anxious towards the end of it. As the years roll on you wonder if it’ll happen.”

But Tim says that something they didn’t expect was that the wait would make them more sure than ever that this was something they wanted to do.

The adoption came through while Tim was covering and commentating the 2004 Athens Olympics, and six weeks after the closing ceremony they headed to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia where they were seeking to adopt siblings.

“We pushed to adopt siblings because it was highly unlikely we’d be able to adopt a second because of our age,” explains Tim.

“For us, it was important for them to have each other.”

The couple first met their children, Skinny and Eskie, on that trip when the children were two and four respectively. Their grandparents were their primary carers after the death of their parents and felt there was a better future for the pair than in their one-room, 12-person house.

But one thing Jenny and Tim didn’t expect to find in Addis Ababa was that Skinny and Eskie had a 12-year-old sister, Meron.

“It got complicated when we were over there…all the information we had been given hadn’t mentioned Meron at all. So we felt that was inappropriate that we adopted her only brother and sister,” says Jenny.

Skinny, Jenny, Tim and Eksie

Because of Meron’s age, Tim and Jenny couldn’t adopt her, so they settled for the next best thing in order to keep the siblings as close as possible.

“When we had enough money again we started the process of getting her to Australia on an International Student Visa,” explains Tim.

But that wasn’t an easy process and Jenny and Tim relied heavily on friends living in Ethiopia for support while they navigated the tricky waters of financing Meron’s schooling and her eventual journey to Australia, five years later at age 17. But it was worth the wait.

“The sense that they’re all together again is good,” says Tim with a smile.

Eskie and Skinny, now in Year 12 and Year 10 respectively, are thriving.

Skinny is a keen swimmer and trains eight times a week, competing in both pool and ocean open water swimming while Eskie’s time is taken up preparing for the end of her formal schooling and what lies beyond.

“Adoptive families present unique challenges,” says Tim pensively. “Like all parents you want to be a positive influence on them and instil your values in them but it all works out in the end.”

“Sometimes people will say ‘is that your son?’ and people do question whether or not you’re the real father,” he adds. “But the kids will often stick up and say ‘He’s my dad’ or ‘She’s my mum’ – we don’t even think about it.”

While non-nuclear families have always found it more difficult to be accepted, the definition of family is becoming more elastic all the time, and the couple says that if there was every any place for them to be not just accepted but welcomed, the Inner North of Canberra was it.

~

I meet the Mark, Michael and Jenny McReynolds in a bustling suburban café just a few minutes’ walk from their busy office—but the corporate life wasn’t always the plan for them. Seventeen years ago, their outlook was far more bucolic on their 550-acre property in Galong, between Cootamunda and Yass.

The family had purchased the property with the intention of dad Michael (who had cut his teeth in shearing for 17 years) becoming a full-time farmer with wife Jenny commuting the 1.5 hours to her job at the Australian Tax Office.

“We loved the community, loved the people,” said Jenny. However, Jenny’s hereditary kidney condition meant that they knew their farming dream would have to end at some point.

“We thought we had better get closer to the hospital,” explains Michael.

Michael, Jenny and Mark

The family moved to Canberra in 1999 with three less-than-impressed kids in tow and Michael began work as a real estate agent with Jenny eventually travelling to Woden three times a week for dialysis.

The city change from their idyllic country lifestyle morphed into the ‘more than 9 to 5’ that is typical of the real estate industry, even more so when Jenny eventually joined Michael at Luton’s Dickson office a year after the move.

“We’ve now sold over 700 houses between us. We work very well as a team.”

But while the family flourished despite the drastic change, Jenny’s condition worsened. In 2006 she was told she would need to seek a kidney replacement. Donors, Jenny explains, are hard to come by because not only do they have to be the same blood type but they also need to be quite fit and healthy.

That Christmas, at the annual Richard Luton Christmas Party, the eponymous real estate mogul stood up and announced, half-jokingly, that if anyone wanted to donate a kidney to Jenny, they should go and see her. The suggestion was met with gentle laughter, but some time later a man pushed through the crowd to Michael and Jenny. It was their colleague Cory McPherson.

“I’m your man,” he announced. “I really mean it. I’m going to ring you tomorrow.”

Jenny and Michael remember the moment with fondness, joking that they said “Okay Cory, that’s lovely but have a think about it tomorrow.”

They never imagined he would go through with the pledge. But Cory stuck to his promise, getting multiple medical and blood tests and even enlisting the help of a personal trainer to lose 11 kilos, making him fit to donate.

“Twelve months after that I had a new kidney.”

Almost 10 years later, Jenny is thriving and still works seven days a week with her husband and son Mark, who also joined the Luton team. They’ve won Agents of the Year for Luton two times running and they’re even flying over to Thailand for Cory’s wedding later this year.

“If I could name a saint it would be Saint Cory,” says Jenny. “He changed my life. It’s better than winning the lottery.”

Mark, Jenny and Michael

Photography: Martin Ollman

This article originally appeared in Magazine: Future for Winter 2017, available for free while stocks last. Find out more about Magazine here.