GOW’S GOALS

By Alyce Collett

When people talk about superstar forwards, people talk about players like Ablett, Dunstall and Lockett. Well, in the Eastern Region Women’s competition, people talk about players like Kathryn Gow, an 18 year old superstar Monbulk forward with a bright future ahead.

Currently in her fourth season, her career began playing school footy. Gow worked hard to prove her stubborn male teammates wrong at school and quickly progressed to playing outside of school, firstly with Emerald as a 14 year old in their under 18s side.

“I always wanted to play footy with the boys at school and they’d never give me the ball, so I really had to work for it, and then when I did work for it they actually realised I could kick, and then I got asked by a friend to come and play footy for Emerald, where I started off my junior season as a 14 year old in the Under 18s.’’

At the end of the 2019 Home and Away season, Gow had not only topped the goal kicking tally in the Outer East Division, but if you combine the tallies of all five divisions in the Eastern Region Women’s Competition, she sits second only behind Division One leader Julia Baker from the Basin. 

She believes the secret to her goal kicking prowess is her hard work and run up routine.

“I don’t know, I guess I’ve got to work for the ball, I don’t expect the ball to come to me,”

“I get a few tips from my coach on how to focus when I’m kicking the goal,”

 “I like to focus on one thing in the background and aim for that when I’m on the run-up and I take a certain amount of steps and there’s a lot of things going through my head as I’m running up – if I don’t do that I hit the post.”

The 2019 season is not the first time Gow has shown her goal kicking prowess. She was also the leading goalkicker in the 2017 season.

Whilst Gow has toyed with the prospect of trying to get a place on either a VFLW or AFLW list she prefers to support the players at local level, enjoying the culture at Monbulk.

“I have considered taking my footy further, and it would be an amazing achievement, I have had the opportunity in the past, unfortunately it just wasn’t for me,”

“I’d much prefer to support other girls who wish to pursue their dreams at an elite level,”

“I honestly play footy for the love of it and for the amazing people I’m honoured to call my friends,”

“I wouldn’t enjoy playing the game as much as I do now if I didn’t have such a fantastic group of girls beside me, for me personally, that’s when I play my best footy.”