Nicol’s impressive shooting has given her a three-year monopoly on the Hot Shot Award, never showing a sign of slowing down her blazing goals for her North East Blaze side.
This year she shot an impressive 835 goals. It is not only her height that has assisted to her success, but her natural instinct to navigate the goal circle and position herself in prime locations.
As humble as ever, Nicol credited much of her success over the 2019 season to her Blaze family.
“I go out there to play my role in the team and my role is shooting goals and I guess it happens to work out each week.
“Like every player and team, you feel like you go through highs and lows over the season. There were times where we performed really well and then there were times where we could have performed better.
“A huge high from our team this year was that we had some newcomers come up and they lifted our team standers. They pushed us and we have to give them an opportunity at an elite level.”
Despite achieving at least 90% goal accuracy nearly every week this season, Nicol said it is still never for certain who the Hot Shot awardee will be.
“My family tracks it every week and they are beyond supportive in that regard. I knew I might be up there with goals but I wasn’t focusing on it.
“I just wanted to go out each week, with my team, and work with them to make it to the grand final.”
When asked what the key to her continued success as a goaler is, Nicol gave us her secret.
“Look I’m a little bit superstitious,” she explained sneakily. “I have to call my parents on the car ride to the game and they have to be available to talk to me.
“I think one time they were in North America travelling around and they still had to be okay to talk to me for at least 10 minutes,
“I also have to practice shots during half time of the previous match, can’t do anymore because then it’s overdone.”
No matter her lucky charm or secret to skills, Libby Nicol is undoubtedly a goaler to go down in the VNL books. Could we see her take out the award again next year?
“Anything is possible,” laughed Nicol. “I love playing at Blaze and the club culture is just incredible,
“Every year we have a new role which is what makes it like a family. This year we were working on bringing up the youngsters in our team and next year it will be to continue that consistency and hopefully take out a premiership.”
