Rebounding Back to Basketball

In her mid-teens, Carlie Smith was one of Canberra’s top young basketball players. She was as tall as her team’s centres and quick enough to play point guard. A mix of long limbs and speed equated to deadly pressure defence on opponents, and she could shoot a basketball with the best of them.

“She was built for the game,” says Rob Parker, who has coached the now 21-year-old shooting guard since she was 14. “When she put her mind to it she was one of the best kids in the ACT by a mile.”

But as easy as ‘putting your mind’ to something sounds, when a smog of anxiety, depression, and coeliac disease storms your body, it isn’t so simple.

Last season, Smith returned to the court after four years of injury, uncertainty, and struggles with mental and physical health. Despite the challenge of finding confidence to re-join elite basketball in the capital, she did it, and came away receiving the Canberra Capitals Academy’s rising star award.

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As a kid, Smith was tiny. She joined Southern Cross’ division four team, and was the shortest player, using speed as her weapon. At 14, she spurted up from the speedy little spark plug to the tallest on the team. But despite the fast growth, she maintained coordination. In a sport where size prevails, the ability to play like a small, skilled guard, and be one of the tallest on the team is almost unheard of.

Smith’s childhood backyard was a battleground, home to just one thing – a basketball hoop. It was where she and big brother, Nathan, matched up almost every afternoon. Two years her senior, he usually won despite scoring handicaps or having to shoot left handed.

“He was the player who did everything right, even if he didn’t get recognition or he didn’t top score,” says Smith of her brother – the reason she decided to try hooping herself. “He was my idol.”

Despite on-court accolades like sinking eight three-pointers in a game for ACT, Smith recalls her finest basketball moment as finally beating Nathan 26-11 in the backyard. She was 15 years old and flaming hot from everywhere in sight that day, shooting contested jump shots over her brother’s outstretched arms. As she scored the final points, Nathan stormed inside blaming sore knees for the loss.

“I’ll never let it down,” she says with a laugh.

Sport trainings started stacking up in Smith’s teens. While she was an ACT ITCP (Intensive Training Centre Program) scholarship holder for basketball, she was also a stellar long distance runner. At 14, she made Nationals for the 400-metre race, but chose to attend basketball Nationals instead as the two clashed. The Alfred Deakin High and Canberra College student had limited free time at home, but often spent it editing landscape and animal photos she had taken, enhancing the colours to brighten them.

Around the same time her training load peaked, Smith’s parents split up and like many children, it had a large impact. As she improved into one of the city’s top talents, Nathan received a scholarship to play University basketball in Canada, and her eldest brother, Joel, moved to Melbourne. In a short span of time, Smith’s family had dispersed leaving her with the choice to stay in Canberra, or follow her mother to Wollongong. Smith’s coaches and teammates started to notice a difference.

“She would come to training in tears and she couldn’t explain what was wrong,” says coach Parker. “There were obviously lots of outside factors and basketball was kind of a safe place. Then it got to a stage where basketball didn’t even provide that, so we would just sit her down during training and talk to her.”

At home, Smith’s photography switched to black and white photos, toying with the dark shades for artistic flair.

“I guess there was a persistent low, kind of, flatness about her,” says Dodgers teammate, Hamida Nunney. “Her mood was not as it normally was, she appeared to be more stressed. She would lose focus more easily and just get her head down a lot faster than maybe the situation was actually suggesting she needed to do. She was quite critical of herself.”

Nunney and another teammate recommended Smith visit Headspace, a National Youth Mental Health Foundation providing early intervention mental health services for 12-25 year olds. She was diagnosed with extreme anxiety and severe depression.

“I never did anything, but always would think thoughts that I didn’t want to be here anymore,” says Smith. “I got to a pretty bad stage.”

Smith left Canberra partway through Year 11, heading to Wollongong with her mum. She took some techniques the people at Headspace taught her like counting to eight out loud when she felt her anxiety take hold. Simple exercises like this helped centre the mind and block out surrounding pressures, whether on the court or in her home. She chose not to finish school, instead spending a year and a half earning a Diploma in Fine Arts at TAFE in Wollongong.

The painting, sculpting, print making, and photography helped her relax, often drawing with her mother on days she didn’t feel up to leaving the house.

Smith played some basketball locally, then was selected to represent Moruya in tournaments around New South Wales. While art helped her relax at home, pressures on the court kicked her anxiety into high gear.

“If we needed a quick score it was always going to go to me and I just couldn’t handle that pressure at that time,” says Smith.

She recalls an on-court panic attack one weekend. It was a close game and the star player wasn’t performing. Suddenly she froze in the moment, started shaking, and tears exploded down her cheeks. She had to be walked off the court and taken outside. One. Two. Three. Four…, she counted. Her racing heart started to slow.

“Having anxiety and depression was horrible,” says Smith, who has managed to embrace mental illness and return to the court last year. “You just feel miserable and you’re overthinking all the time.”

After a year and a half away from basketball, she returned home to Canberra and pulled on an ACT jersey for Under-20’s Nationals. She hadn’t skipped a beat, and was having the tournament of her life. Then in one of the final games she tore the posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) in her left knee.

Sidelined over the next few months, Smith realised there was more than just her knee causing problems. She was low energy, felt ill, and couldn’t find a way to improve her condition.

“My knee healed up, but then I just kept getting sicker and sicker,” she remembers.

After several tests, Smith was diagnosed with coeliac disease (CD). When someone with CD consumes gluten – a protein found in wheat, rye, barley and oats – their immune system reacts abnormally, damaging the small intestine and reducing the colon’s ability to absorb nutrients. This can affect the human body in a number of different ways including reducing bone mineral density – leading to osteoporosis and stress fractures; and causing iron-deficiency anaemia – dropping levels of red blood cells.

But what many people are unaware of is that links between depression and undiagnosed coeliac disease are now being made by health professionals.

“There’s no set symptom that you have to have to warrant testing for coeliac disease,” says Accredited Practising Dietitian and Technical Officer for Coeliac Australia, Penny Dellsperger. “Some people have no obvious symptoms at all. It could be something like anxiety or depression developing as your only signs, so I think that quite often goes undiagnosed because doctors don’t always associate certain things with undiagnosed coeliac disease.”

While CD cannot be cured, it can be controlled with a strict, life-long gluten free diet. For Smith this involves packing her own food for basketball road trips. She makes rice dishes, adding plain meats without sauce, and vegetables. Experts at Coeliac Australia say they believe 1 in 70 people have CD, but around 80-percent of those are undiagnosed.

Like many people suffering from coeliac disease, as Smith changed her diet, her condition improved and she returned again to basketball. First playing local Premier 2 for Woden Weston Creek, she quickly progressed to Premier 1. Canberra Capitals Academy coach, Greg Evans, then asked her to join the team and on debut, Smith netted 16-points.

Hampered by a mid-season ankle injury, she only managed to play 10 games for the Caps Academy, though it’s clear a taste of semi-professional hoops has kept her hungry for the sport. Now entering pre-season for the new SEABL season, Smith’s torn ankle ligaments have healed, her diet is well-managed, and she has taken mental illness in a full-court stride.

“I think it was good to have a break when I did even though I was going through so many issues,” says Smith, reflecting on other young talents who have flickered away from the game.

Wollongong is still a place Smith visits to take her mind off life’s stresses. She stays with her mum, walks the beach, paddleboards. They play in the rock pools.

It’s been four years since she left year 11 to study the Fine Arts diploma she credits with getting back on track. That piece of paper included an education in self more than anything else. Injuries have plagued her hoops success as much as mental illness, but Smith keeps returning to the hardwood, ready to release that silky smooth jump shot and compete with the pack.

Two women set up blank canvases in a Wollongong living room looking out towards the harbour. Earth, Wind & Fire’s September streams through computer speakers, filling the room. The women place patterned fabric over the canvas, mix paints, and brush the afternoon away. The relationship is no longer teenage daughter and her mother, just great friends. Smith reaches towards the fabric when she’s finished, the names Nathan and Joel tattooed across her arm. She peels away her material stencil and smiles. A smattering of brightly coloured flowers beam back.

For more information on mental illness visit

Headspace: http://headspace.org.au/

Or Black Dog Institute: http://www.blackdoginstitute.org.au/

Want to know more about coeliac disease? Visit Coeliac Australia

This article was originally published by Yabba.guru