Aussie Glow win Under 19 Goalball World Cup

The Australian Under 19’s Women’s Goalball team - the Aussie Glow - have created history becoming the first Australian team to win a gold medal at any level of international competition.  

In late June the team travelled to Budapest, Hungary to take on the world at the 2017 IBSA (International Blind Sports Federation) Youth Goalball World Championships. The top nine youth women’s teams gathered to participate in competition. Australia’s women had previously finished fourth in the 2013 Youth World Goalball Championships and were motivated to challenge the best.

Sport NSW Disability Inclusion Manager Murray Elbourn was the team’s head coach, as he was in 2013. Murray played for the Australian Men’s Goalball team from 1991 through to his retirement at the 2002 World Cup. He competed at the 1992 Paralympic Games and was co-captain at his final international competition. Murray was enthusiastic about his team’s chances of medalling.

Australia drew the ‘hard pool’ with four out of the five teams who competed in that pool finishing in the top five in the final tournament standings. Murray believed that playing against the better teams in the harder pool was a big advantage when they crossed over in their Quarter and Semi final games. Faith Voytas (physio) did an amazing job with recovery of the team, including their trip to the famous mineral hot spring baths in host city of Budapest.

Australia recorded a mercy win over Spain to kick off their tournament (13-3) but then ran into a strong Russian team who hadn’t been beaten in this Women’s under 19 division since 2009. They dominated Australia to win 12-2 which was the turning point for Australia in the tournament. The following day Australia defeated Germany 12-5, then USA 7-4 to finish second in their pool and set up a cross over Quarter Final with Asia Pacific rivals Korea who they duly defeated 11-2. This set up a rematch from the 2013 Under 19’s Youth Goalball Championship against the winners in the other pool – Brazil. Getting off to a fast start Australia got revenge from 2013 leading from start to finish to win 11-6.

This set up a rematch from the pool game against Russia in the final. The Russian team were enormous favourites but Australia knew that the game isn’t just played on paper and despite falling to a 0-3 scoreline half way through the first half, the team fired back to be 3-3 with two minutes to play. Another goal from Captain Brodie Smith from Maitland and strong defence by Jessica Clark from Hornsby put pressure on the Russian number one who threw two long ball penalties within eight seconds of half time allowing Brodie Smith to score on both and Australia led 6-3 at the break.

Russia wouldn’t go away and swapped goals with Australia in the second half but never got closer than two at any stage. Australia defeated Russia 9-6 to hand the strong favourites their first ever defeat in Women’s Under 19 World Championship competition and win the first ever World Championships medal across any division for the 37 years of history in the sport here in Australia. The Aussie Glow captured what all before them had never done, GOLD!

Coach Murray Elbourn said it was his proudest sporting moment in 26 years in the sport. Captain Brodie Smith won the leading Goal Scorers Trophy with 47 shots into the back of our opponents net. Big efforts also came from Nikita Grosser, who scored two goals in the final, and strong defence by the NSW trio of Jessica Clark (who played the entire tournament bar two minutes), plus the 16 year old babies of the team Rosanna Liang and Alice Kingston.

Goalball is now the most widely played Paralympic Blind Sport in NSW through the NSW Goalball for Schools Cup which saw over 2,000 students play the sport in NSW alone during the first half of 2017 thanks to funding from the NSW Office of Sport and the program delivery through Sport NSW.

The high-performance program was 100% self-funded and is seeking a full time sponsor, however significant support from Variety NSW and Variety South Australia through their wonderful scholarship athlete pathway programs helped many of the girls get to Budapest on this occasion. Those Variety Scholarships applications are currently available to students aged 18 years and under with disabilities but who have represented either NSW and/or Australia.

Help promote this unique Blind and Vision Impaired Paralympic sport to build program capacity within Australia for more future World success by contacting Murray Elbourn through email murray.elbourn@sportnsw.com.au or by phone on 0427 186 734.