In season, Jenny Borlase would use powerful visualising strategies. She would imagine the trajectory of her shot and wouldn’t allow herself to go to sleep until she had ‘made’ three consecutive goals.
For many years throughout the 1990s decade, amongst all the elite netball shooters in Australia, Jenny Borlase stood tall as the highest percentage shooter.
That takes discipline, courage, and enormous goal shooting practice. And mental practice.
Given the immense pressure placed upon shooters, she was a great advocate for visualisation.
Each night in-season, she would visualise the ball coming down court, receiving the ball, then turning to face the basket, balancing, steadying then releasing the shot.
She would watch the trajectory of the shot and wouldn’t allow herself to go to sleep until she had ‘made’ three consecutive goals.
Little wonder that Borlase was a tower of reliability under pressure. Blessed with a stable, disciplined, analytical personality, she demonstrated a profound poise in a pulsating knockout game against NZ in the 1995 World Cup in Birmingham.
Goal shooter Vicki Wilson blew out her knee, leaving Borlase to enter the game with the score 24-23 just 20 seconds before half time. Under unspeakable pressure, Borlase shot 9 from 10, and saw Australia to ultimate World Cup victory in the final against South Africa.
Then again in 1999, Borlase replaced Wilson at three-quarter time, with Australia down by six, 28-34, in the final of the World Cup against NZ in NZ.
Borlase shot 8 from 11 under monumental pressure to see Australia snatch a one-goal victory right on the final whistle.
Borlase was a member of three World Cup campaigns – 1991, 1995 and 1999 – for the Diamonds and was part of the shooting duo with Natalie Avellino that led Garville to dominate the State League rivalry against Contax during the early to mid 1990s.
Born and raised in a small town, Cummins on the Eyre Peninsula, Borlase played country sport, specialising in netball and tennis until her late teens before moving to the city.
She is the mother of Opals star basketballer, Izzy Borlase.
