Despite playing basketball at the Olympics, after retiring Pat Mickan coached netball at State and National League levels.
It was about 6.15pm on a hot evening on the asphalt basketball courts of Renmark.
Cars were parked around the two courts with a group of young men sitting on car bonnets having a beer and occasionally watching the game.
Without warning, a venomous brown snake emerged from the nearby bushes and slithered across the court – players running in all directions amid panicking shrieks and yells.
The umpire moved quickly, picking up the snake by its tail and twirling it around attempting to hit its head on the asphalt each time.
Then all hell broke loose. The snake slipped out of the umpire’s grasp and was flung into the air, headed for the young men sitting on their car bonnets. They also yelled panicking and took off in all directions.
No-one remembers what happened to the snake, but this was country sport at its best – the roots of so many elite athletes from this great land of ours.
Pat Mickan grew up in Renmark and like many country kids, played every sport available. The city beckoned after year 12 and she moved into the senior State teams for basketball and netball.
The promise of the Olympic Games lured her to the former and she eventually played 150 games for the Opals, helping to take Australia from ‘nowhere’ in the world rankings to Olympic medal contenders throughout the decade of the 1980s, which included the 1984 and 1988 Olympics.
She was inducted into Basketball Australia’s Hall of Fame in 2013, Basketball SA Hall of Fame in 2018 and the SA Sports Hall of Fame in 2025.
