By Linda Pearce
Just 30 women have been inducted into the Netball Australia Hall of Fame as Athlete Members since the honour was established with seven inaugural inductees back in 2008.
Think about it. From the many millions who have played the game, and the 197 to have represented the Diamonds over almost 100 years.
Just 30.
This year’s inductees span different eras and circumstances and three states, with a collective 193 international caps, six World Tournament/Championship/Cup triumphs and two Commonwealth Games gold medals.
One shooter, two defenders, myriad emotions.
Cath Cox cried when told the news on a podcast with her great friend and former captain Liz Ellis.
Laura Geitz, too, felt humbled and honoured.
Cheryl Sidebottom (married name Stevenson) initially thought it was a prank call. Liz Ellis, Netball Australia’s Chair, on the line? Yeah, right, of course it is.
We celebrate all three, as well as outstanding Service Award recipient Ronda Kimble, ahead of the Australian Netball Awards in Melbourne on October 30.
CATHERINE COX AM (NSW) – ATHLETE MEMBER
Diamond #119. Caps: 108
Cox’s 10-year-old daughter Harper came across some old YouTube footage of her 108-Test mum recently. Looked at it, quietly. Looked at her mum. Then back at the screen.
“She goes ‘you’re not actually that good, are you?’,” Cox recalls with a laugh. “And do you know what? I was sitting there thinking the same thing and watching it with my commentator hat on.
“I was like ‘Oh my God this is terrible!’ Kids bring you back down to earth, don’t they?”.
Still, consider the heights reached by the 188cm goaler who played in five premierships across 254 national league games, and represented Australia at six pinnacle events, winning two world championships and one Commonwealth Games gold.
Cox averaged over 21 goals per game for her country and earned multiple individual awards and accolades, including Australian International Player of the Year (2004-05) and Australian ANZ Championship Player of the Season (2008), before being inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame and receiving an AM in 2022.
“I think to be recognised by your own sport is super-special,” says Cox, who retired after a fairytale finish with the Melbourne Vixens in 2014 despite playing the majority of her career with the Sydney/NSW Swifts.
While admitting “this is the last thing, I’m done after this – there is actually nothing left to go”, another trigger for Cox’s tears was the thought of taking her mother, Frances, to the Netball Awards, having lost dad Neville to cancer earlier in 2026.
Now a successful broadcaster, her own playing career is one she rarely thinks about. “I feel like it’s 1000 years ago and I’m a completely new person now.”
Pressed to reflect, the tall but agile shooter – one adept and fearless from long range who admits she would have enjoyed the current Super Shot era – believes she was “solid” domestically, particularly in the comfortable Swifts environment under Julie Fitzgerald, but less consistent for the Diamonds.
Evolution was pivotal to her success. From being a slightly “soft”, holding shooter to one with more dimensions and surer hands. From her prime to, eventually, a mentor for the next generation.
“I remember the 2011 World Cup, I was Caitlin Bassett’s biggest fan, and I was just trying to help Caitlin Bassett,” Cox says. “So I’m pretty proud of just the stages of my career, and what I thought I needed to become, and then became that for the greater good, probably.”
LAURA GEITZ (QLD) – ATHLETE MEMBER
Diamond #149. Caps: 71
Laura Geitz’s pride in her 14-year career as a champion defender and acclaimed captain of the Queensland Firebirds and Australian Diamonds starts in clubland, her reminiscences coming shortly after the Brisbane Lions’ stunning AFL three-peat.
“Just seeing their culture and what they’ve got there I feel like we were very lucky to have a similar feeling to that when we went back to back in 2015 and 2016 at the Firebirds, and even (the premiership in) 2011,” Geitz recalls.
“You get those years that just seem to click and you just have that belief. It’s obviously said a lot but it’s actually really hard to describe what it is, that feeling amongst the playing group, so my time at the Firebirds I hold exceptionally close to my heart.”
So, too, her years in green-and-gold, highlighted by 2014 Commonwealth Games gold and the 2015 home Netball World Cup triumph. Indeed, seeing the current Diamonds en route to next year’s pinnacle event in Sydney triggers another suite of precious memories.
“It’s not until you actually exit and take a breath, and it’s probably years after, that you look back and actually realise the enormity of it all and how blessed and lucky you were as an individual to not only achieve that but to do it with such an awesome bunch of people,” Geitz says.
An unbreakable bond with teammates she sees only rarely is another treasured legacy for the regional Queensland product who graduated from the AIS Canberra Darters to play 169 games in the purple dress (for three flags, and two ANZ Championship Player of the Year awards), and 71 Tests in Diamonds’ green and gold before retiring in 2018. A bronze statue now stands outside Brisbane’s Nissan Arena.
Hall of Fame induction is a different thing again.
“Initially you go ‘wow, I’ve been out of the game that long! I’m starting to feel old’,” says Geitz, 38. “But these wonderful privileges are happening and it only feels like yesterday that it was my life, and life is so different now.
“Then you see the people that are already in there. Just such a huge honour to have your name alongside such iconic netballers of Australia.”
For the 2011 Liz Ellis Diamond winner and 2025 Sport Australia Hall of Fame inductee, there is also some welcome overlap with her current priorities.
That is, as a mother of four children now more aware of events that – apart from Barney, the eldest, who was a baby at the 2018 Commonwealth Games – occurred before they were born.
“You never set out to obviously have these awards or this recognition,” Geitz says.
“It’s just like the gift that keeps on giving, in a way, because that part of your life has closed.”
CHERYL SIDEBOTTOM (WA) – ATHLETE MEMBER
Diamond #59. Caps: 14
There is a certain irony in the fact that Sidebottom must overcome a fear of flying to make it to Melbourne from Perth for the Netball Awards dinner, given height and elevation were key attributes for the defender who was a member of Australia’s victorious World Tournament teams in 1971 and 1975.
The 72-year-old is equal parts terrified of taking to the skies for the first time in six years, and – after doubting at first that she could – determined to be present in person, to receive a totally unexpected honour more than half-a-century after a short but brilliant career.
Yet, despite a total of just 14 Test caps in the days when international opportunities were only available every four years, Sidebottom never played in a losing Australian side.
Never even considered the prospect, to be honest.
“Winning twice for Australia it was wonderful to represent the green and gold.”
“I just loved the game. I was very passionate. Never thought I’d go on the court and play for Australia with ‘we’re not gonna win it’. It was always ‘we’re gonna win. We’re too good.’”
The product of a prominent WA sporting family and a member of Western Australia’s golden generation, Sidebottom also collected three national titles in five years of representing her state before retiring to start a family.
“I wanted to finish on top and so I did,” says the mum of two and grandmother of four.
Still, the Hall of Fame induction came out of nowhere, as the Ellis call that started with a sense of disbelief and progressed to tears morphed into bewilderment.
“I could not get my head around it for weeks, because I dissected ‘why me?’ Why was I picked? Or how could it be?’,” she says.
“I came from humble beginnings and when I look back, a lot of work. You caught the train and you took a plastic bag with your runners and that to training and you just did it. And I thought back to all of that.”
And the answer to how and why? “I just thought ‘well, I must have been able to play the game. Just that. I just thought ‘oh, my goodness. I’ll take it. I’ll take the honour.
“I look back and I think ‘wow, I was just a kid. I was 19, and winning two world tournaments was amazing’.”
RONDA KIMBLE OAM (SERVICE AWARD RECIPIENT)
A lifelong involvement with netball began for Kimble as a 13-year-old player with Miranda Magpies in Sydney's Sutherland association in 1960.
In the more than six decades since, while encompassing a move west to the fledgling Greystanes club in what is now the Parramatta-Auburn District Association, there has barely been a role Kimble has not filled or a contribution left unmade.
Kimble has been a volunteer, coach, umpire, fund-raiser, club secretary and president, association delegate and executive member, archivist and passionate umpire educator.
Recognised with multiple life memberships, the 79-year-old Kimble has exhibited an extraordinary dedication to the sport now recognised with a 2026 Netball Australia Service Award.
