At the 1978 Australian Women’s Basketball Club Championships the young netball player was a very interested spectator. She was a NSW State Under 17 Netball representative player and was at the Championships as a member of the Sutherland Women’s basketball team. She had played little basketball and she was intrigued by watching Australian representative basketball player Pat Mickan from the Adelaide team Sturt. “Wow! She was really a great basketball player. She made the All Star Team and she was the first player to inspire me to play basketball seriously,” recalls Maree White the young netball player. Maree used that inspiration to be selected on theAustralian Women’s Olympic Basketball Team with Mickan in 1988.
Maree Bernadette White was born June 7th1960 in Darlinghurst, NSW. She played very little basketball as a junior. Her sport was netball which she played as a representative player with the Sutherland (Sydney) Association. As a thirteen year old Maree had one season of social basketball with a few netball friends, but preferred netball at that time. She was a defender in netball and represented Sutherland Netball from age eleven through to sixteen. In 1977 she was selected to the NSW Under 17 Netball Team to play in the Australian Championships.
Higher School Certificate studies at St Patrick’s College Sutherland became Maree’s priority in 1978 and she played no basketball or netball that year except for some social netball.
In 1979, Maree under the encouragement of Sutherland Basketball Coaches Dianne and Trevor Cook started back with basketball and though she had played little basketball she was selected as a member of the Sutherland Women’s Team to play at the Australian Club Championships. “I was very raw, but they wanted to expose me to that level of basketball,” Maree recalls.
The next year 1979 Maree played less netball and more basketball. She had the inspiration from Pat Mickan.“I also needed a break from netball, it had been a lot of hard work and to some extent overkill” says Maree. “I enjoyed the change to basketball and never looked back to netball at the elite level.”
She played another year of basketball at Sutherland under Coach Terry Williams and then the next year moved (along with Karen Dalton) to the Bankstown Club to be coached by Robbie Cadee who was to become the Australian Coach in 1985.
Maree was selected to her first NSW State Team in 1979 when she was a senior having not played any junior representation at the State level. She played for NSW from 1979 to 1982, winning the Australian Championships in 1980. “Bankstown was a turning point in my career. I loved it! Everything was so good...the coaching, the support, the organisation within the club and my teammates it was just great,” recalls Maree. It was during this period that Maree was selected in NSW teams to tour Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Bulgaria.
Bankstown played in the newly formed Women’s National Basketball League (WNBL) and in 1982 played against St Kilda in the WNBL Grand-Final where they were defeated. The Club did finish the year on a high note when they won the Australian Club Championships.
In 1983 Maree went to Melbourne and played for one year at the St Kilda Club under Coach Bill Palmer. By her own admission, “It was not a great year playing for me and I really missed the Bankstown connection. In 1984 I didn’t play any basketball and just enjoyed living in Melbourne. I moved back to Sydney at the end of 1984 with my fiance Damian Keogh and had a think about what I wanted to do with my basketball.
What she wanted to do was to play more basketball and be a part of the Australian Team. She had been an Australian Squad player in 1981 and 1982 but was not selected to tour. “In 1985 I got stuck into basketball againand re-joined Bankstown with Robbie Cadee.Robbie was a huge influence on my career. He put a lot of time into my game and helped me believe that I could play at the highest level internationally,” credits Maree.
Maree’s first representation with the Australian Team was for the 1986 World Championships in the Soviet Union. Australia found the going tough and gained 9th place. She remembers, “The World Championships were a great learning experience. The conditions were tough, the food terrible and the basketball a real challenge. It was my first tour with the Australian team and along with Michelle Timms we were the rookies. I clearly remember ‘Timmsy’ (Michele Timms) and me sitting down the bench and at times we were so nervous we didn’t want to go on, she was subbed in first and then I joined her about three minutes later.We laugh about that today.”
Maree toured to the USA (eleven games) and Europe (eleven games) with Australia in 1987.
In 1988 after a game for Australiaagainst Japan and a series against Canada in Australia, Maree was selected on the Australian Women’s Team for the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games.
The Australian Team for the 1988 Olympic Games was announced at a press conference. “There was no phone call or anything like that we just heard it announced when everyone else heard it via the media,” says Maree.
By this time Maree and Damian Keogh were married and there was great pride all round for both families as Damian was also selected for the Men’s Basketball Team for the 1988 Seoul Olympics. They would be there as husband and wife. “It was special...very special when Damian and I both made the team,” says Maree.
However there was still one major hurdle for Maree and the Australian Team and that was the1988 Olympic Qualification Tournament in Malaysia.In preparation for the Qualification Tournament Australia played in the Seoul Goodwill Tournament and in a tournament in Riga, Latvia.
Australia played well in Malaysia and qualified for the 1988 Olympic Games.
In the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games Australia got off to a bad start when they lost heavily to Korea. They then defeated the Soviet Union in a massive upset. The loss by the Soviets was their first in Olympic history.
The Australians played Yugoslavia in the Semi-Finals only to lose by one point when the opposition scored a fluke basket on the buzzer. But for that basket they would have been in the playoff for the Gold Medal!
“I was so gutted when we lost that game,” Maree recalls. “That pit in my stomach didn’t go away for days. I can still feel it and every-time I watch a team on television losing an important game and sitting down with their heads in their hands. I can remember how I felt in 1988.”
Australia now had to play the USSR again, this time for the Bronze medal They lost that game and had to settle for an exceptional 4th place in the 1988 Olympic Games.
After the 1988 Seoul Olympics Maree decided that she wanted to move along in other directions and retired from sport. She had taught in primary school since 1982 and decided she needed a change. She loved travel and became a Flight Attendant with QANTAS until her first daughter Maddison was born. Her involvement in basketball from that time was as a mother and also very much as support for her husband Damian who was to go on and play for the Sydney Kings in the NBL and for Australia at the 1992 Olympic Games (he played in three Olympics Games 1984, 1988 and 1992).
Maree Keogh (White) had made the late change from a netball career to basketball and her just reward was to play for her country in basketball at an Olympic Games something she could never have done in netball. It was worth the change!
Maree Keogh practising for St. Kilda basketball Club (M. Keogh)
Maree Keogh (Maree Keogh/Basketball Australia)