Love and basketball: Why Nicole Seekamp suddenly walked away from the game

Seekamp was one of Australian basketball’s brightest stars. Then, on the verge of selection to the Olympics, she abruptly quit. For the first time, here’s the story why.

Image: Supplied

Out on Coonoolcra Station, in rural New South Wales, some six hours and 550 kilometres away from her hometown of Renmark, and further still to where she became a basketball star in Adelaide, the day begins like any other for Nicole Seekamp. She’s awake sometime around 4am, now out of habit, but mostly due to the heat. During the height of summer, locals in Wilcannia – the closest town – can expect highs of above 40 degrees for two to three months straight. But as soon as she’s up, it’s straight to work. There’s plenty to do on a goat farm. On any given day, Seekamp is a farmer, bookkeeper, gardener, plumber, cook, truck driver, vet, mechanic, occasionally a welder, sometimes a copilot, and on top of all that, a full-time mother.

The days aren’t always easy. Often, there are times it’s quite literally too hot to work. The afternoon peak means the days start early, before things are put on hold in the afternoon, before work extends into the cooler hours of the evening. During the winter, it’s almost the opposite, both the mornings and nights becoming freezing cold. And even when the work is seemingly all done for the day, that’s still only half of it. Between the work at Coonoolcra, there’s also work to do at the neighbouring Keelambara Station, north of nearby Tilpa.

This life isn’t just a long way from her home in South Australia’s Riverland, but a whole world away from the excitement of international basketball competitions, the thrill of a WNBL Grand Final, and the pressure of WNBA training camp.

So why exactly did Nicole Seekamp, not only the captain of the Adelaide Lightning, but one of the country’s best point guards, on the verge of an Olympic berth, and very much at her peak, abruptly walk away from the game?