The Freeman moment that drove Laura Geitz to a Sports Australia Hall of Fame sporting career

As was the case for so many of her contemporaries, a young Laura Geitz had the seed of a sporting dream germinate on that night in September 2000 when Freeman carried the weight of a nation around the Sydney Olympic track to win gold.

For a 12-year-old Geitz, who watched on from her home on Queensland’s Southern Downs, the drive to become a world beater, was set.

“I would’ve been probably Year 6 or Year 7 and I remember watching that in the lounge room in Allora and thinking to myself then, I just want to represent my country,” Geitz said of Freeman’s 400m triumph.

“I just want to wear the green and gold and I want to win a gold medal. That moment made me want that to happen for me.”

Geitz was a promising athlete at the time. But it was on the netball court that she excelled, going on to play 169 national league matches for the Queensland Firebirds, leading them to back-to-back premierships in 2015-16, and 71 Tests for the Diamonds, captaining the side to a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in 2014, and lifting the World Cup in Sydney in 2015.

It’s for these achievements she has won membership to the Sport Australia Hall of Fame (SAHOF), her inclusion announced earlier this week ahead of a formal induction in Melbourne later this year.

Geitz had known for some time she would be announced among this year’s new SAHOF members but it still seems surreal.

And she’s still coming to terms with being included alongside some of Australia’s sporting greats - from Don Bradman and Dawn Fraser to Ian Thorpe and the woman who sparked her dream, Freeman.

“To be alongside her in some small way is quite surreal,” she said of her early idol.

Winning athlete membership alongside this year’s inductees - two-time grand slam tournament champion Lleyton Hewitt, Australian Football Hall of Fame Legend Jason Dunstall, former Australian rugby league captain Cameron Smith, Olympic snowboard gold medallist Torah Bright and Australia’s most-capped Socceroo Mark Schwarzer - is humbling.

“My initial thoughts, to be completely frank with you, were, I don’t really belong there,” she said of the phone call she received from SAHOF chair John Bertrand informing her of her membership and mentioning those she would be joining.

“And there’s probably still an element of that because it’s huge - it’s as big as it gets really, so there was just some disbelief.”

Now a mother of four - Barney, 8, Franky, 6, Billie, 4, and Pippa, 2 - seven years retired from playing netball and “out of that world of sport”, having hung up the commentator’s microphone as well, Geitz is enjoying being able to revisit that time in her life with her family, especially her older children who are starting to understand mum was a bit of a big deal in her day.

“It is really special and then it’s also really humbling in a way because they have a great ability to be able to bring you back down too,” she said.

“You go, well, this is what’s happening and they’re like, ‘yeah, that’s pretty cool but I’m excited to see Cameron Smith’.”

But when Barney and his school mates played a futsal tournament at Brisbane’s Nissan Arena recently - the home of the Queensland Firebirds - Geitz’s standing in the netball world became a little clearer.

“I go to school pick up and they were like, ‘Barney’s mum, there was this weird big statue of you today where we played futsal, what’s that about?’ “

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Her own children are just starting to dip a toe into the sporting pool but if they can get the same enjoyment and direction out of sport as their mother did, she’ll be grateful.

“I just think what sport taught me - as a person, as an athlete - transfers across so much to life now,” she said.

“When there’s challenging times in life now, you draw on the fact that you were able to push yourself to be utmost and get the most out of yourself … and I do revisit quite regularly the discipline and what it taught me.”