Just two months before the 27-year-old's second lung collapsed and her life ended so prematurely, the former WA State League netballer had represented the West Vic Eels alongside her sister Jordan and mum Belinda Hayden in the annual Victorian Community Services Association (VACSAL) Carnival.
The next year, with the grief still raw, the group was renamed “Gina’s Dream Team”. In 2010, with Jordan still in the shooting circle and the Smith sisters anchoring the defence as they still do annually, Gina’s Dream Team returned to VACSAL to win the A-grade title.
Emotional? Utterly. And so it remains, always, regardless of the on-court results.
“All the girls that knew Gina or me or Jordan, they just wanted to come and play,’’ says Belinda, a respected Ballarat netball identity and mentor who is now part of Netball Victoria’s Aboriginal Advisory Committee.
“We started off with one A-Grade side, in 2009, made the finals, and from 2010 we never looked back. We played in A, B and C-grade and we won all three.’’
A mum-of-four - including sons Marcus and Aidan, the latter having named his daughter Georgina after her late Aunty - with husband Stanley Kickett, Belinda thinks of her eldest daughter daily. Yet she sees the annual netball competitions - such as VACSAL and the NADOC Carnival that was also part of the team’s early days in the family’s native Western Australia - as cherished celebrations of Gina’s life.
This November, Covid permitting, will be no different.
“When the carnival comes, we all meet on the Friday night and we have a get-together, introductions, uniform presentation, and myself and my husband, we talk about Gina,’’ says Belinda.
“And we always ask the girls, 'would you like to come up and say something about her and what she meant to you?’, so that the new girls get an idea of who she was.
“This is my baby. This team is her. So it’s me keeping her memory alive, but also telling the new girls who come into this team about her, and who she was, what she represented and how she conducted herself on and off the court.’’
Thus, naturally, behavioural standards are high.
“I sort of put it out there that when you play for this team and when you put this dress on, you’re not only representing Gina’s Dream Team, you’re representing the memory of her and what she’s done and how far she’s come with netball and how passionate and how much she loved playing netball in Ballarat.
"But also at youth carnivals and any Koori carnivals that you go to, show great sportsmanship on and off the court. I say to them ‘no disrespect, no mouthing (off) or back-chatting to the umpires or whatever’. I pull the girls aside and just have a little yarn with them, and they go back in there and you see a different person.
“They will come up and apologise and I say ‘don’t apologise - just remember why we’re playing and who we’re playing for, and why we’re here’. It’s just a lot of positive stuff that goes back to and from each other that you can see from the girls themselves.
“Win or lose, there’s always tears. Win or lose, they’ll come up and tell me something about Gina.’’
At 57, Belinda still plays mixed netball in her adopted home of Ballarat despite what she laughs are regular calls for her retirement, and where the Njaki Njaki woman lives on Wathurong land.
She sees how important netball is to the young Koori people in the region, and never fails to be impressed by the skills the Indigenous athletes display - with Gina's Dream Team a shining example.
“When they play together, it’s different from seeing any other game, and it’s clean, clean netball,'' Belinda says. "Sometimes you get umpires saying ‘well, that was a brilliant game’. I’ve never seen a game like that, and it’s always good feedback.’'
So how, more broadly, to engage others?
“Now that Netball Victoria’s got this Aboriginal Advisory Committee, that’s a great start. So you’ve got these young girls coming through that pathway,’’ she says.
“I keep saying to Mel (Taylor, NV General Manager Participation) ‘what’s there for our Indigenous girls? Where can they go? How can you guys create a pathway that can better our netballers?’
"Because there’s so much talent out there, but how can we get them through, even if it’s one girl, to follow her dream and follow that pathway through.
“So she’s just been amazing, Mel, and pushed it right through…There’s a big big population of Koori mob here in Victoria. But there’s a lot of issues with travel, money, parents’ support, so ‘how do we get these children here, how do we motivate ‘em, how can we get them involved and get more girls to participate?’
“A lot of them say that the young kids don’t have the talent and the ability. They do, Trust me, they do. It’s just that they need that one person just to be that push and encourage them to go on.’’
One, happily, who is continuing is Gina’s daughter, Alkira, who lives in Melbourne with her father Aaron and brother Mingara, 14. The 16-year-old, who made her debut alongside her nan in Gina’s Dream Team D-grade side at the 2019 VACSAL carnival, was recently selected in the Netball Victoria Eastern Talent Academy.
Emotional? Utterly (2).
“Oh my God. Gina would have been over the moon,’’ says Belinda, when asked how her daughter would have reacted to the news, before quoting a social media post from Akira that congratulated her teammates and finished with the hope the teenager can make her Mum and Nad proud.
“It just brought tears to my eyes,’’ says Belinda. “When I (saw) her I gave her a big hug and said ‘you know I’m so proud of you and what you do, and Dad, and Mummy Gina she’d be even prouder of you. She’d be the first on the sidelines, shouting, no matter where you are’.
“I tell Akira, ‘just remember she’s watching over you, sweetheart’.’’
Written by Linda Pearce
