Diamonds champ joins Hall of Fame

CAITLIN Thwaites is a Commonwealth Games gold medal winner, World Cup champion, Suncorp Super Netball premier, and nine-time Bendigo Sports Star monthly award winner.

Yet somehow she never went on to take home the Bendigo Sports Star of the year award…

“It’s a bit of a running joke in my family that I was a monthly award winner nine times, but I never actually won the yearly award,” she said.

However, all that is forgotten now as Thwaites was inducted into the Bendigo Sports Star Hall of Fame last Friday night, an accolade she said she never saw coming.

“I am in shock, it’s such an honour,” she said.

“There are so many people who have given so much to sport in the area, so to be amongst those names, and I don’t really feel like I deserve to be among them, just feels amazing.”

Thwaites has done nearly all you can do in an Australian netballer’s career and she said picking a highlight was difficult.

But in her final year as a professional she won the Super Netball premiership with the Melbourne Vixens and said that was her fondest memory. 

Due to COVID-19 the team was in a hub on the Gold Coast and Thwaites didn’t know if she would see her ill father again when she made the tough decision to play.

“The Commonwealth Games gold and the World Cup gold are real pinnacles of netball,” she said.

“But I think the final year that I had with the Vixens and having to deal with so much adversity, and having to overcome COVID and restrictions and quarantine, and all the other barriers.

“I could write a book about that year alone, but it was pretty epic and being able to finish up on that note, it was very special.”

Thwaites is now immortalised with the other Bendigo sporting legends in the Hall of Fame, even with the Sports Star of the Year award alluding her throughout her career.

“I could never win that damn thing,” she said. “Amongst my 18-year career I never managed to win it.”

“But that goes to show the calibre of athletes that are constantly, year in and year out coming from the area.”