Joanne on Ice
Article courtesy of Australian Catholics' Open Planet

Meet one of the young athletes leading the surge in popularity of previously unfamiliar winter sports in Australia.

Every four years, the winter Olympics come around and, for two or three weeks, many Australians find themselves taking an interest in sports we rarely see. Within a few days of starting to watch unusual events such as the luge, the slalom and the four-man bobsled on TV, there’s plenty of us who have become instant experts.

‘That was terrible’, we tell each other as we wait for the score.

‘That wasn’t too bad’, we say with great authority, ready to explain the difference between a triple lutz and a triple salchow. Before long, however, we will have forgotten what the words even mean.

It’s a bit different for the athletes involved. Take Joanne Carter, the young Australian who finished 12th in the figure skating earlier this year at Nagano. Weeks, months and years of hard work and meticulous preparation lay behind her recording the best result ever achieved by an Australian individual woman skater at an Olympics. Joanne, aged 17, has won the Australian national women’s title for individual skating for the last four years. Her passion for skating dates back to the time when she was five and her mother, Carol, happened to take her into an ice rink on a hot day. Joanne enjoyed herself so much that her mother arranged lessons. By the time Jo was 13 and had competed successfully at an international level, coming 18th in a major event in Germany, she decided that she was serious about skating.

‘I knew that this is what I wanted to do as a career’, she says. ‘I wanted to match the top skaters in the world.’

The result was a gruelling regime. Every morning while she was in high school, Jo was on the rink by 5.30am. She trained until 8am before heading off to school at Mount St Benedict’s in Sydney’s Pennant Hills. Yet she speaks lightly of the cost of her commitment.

‘Everyone has to have a dream. Since I could remember, I wanted to go to the Olympics. I’m glad that something I love has taken me there.’

When Joanne came off the ice at Nagano, she thanked both Macquarie Skating Club and her school. Her build-up to the Olympics coincided with getting through year twelve in 1997. She matriculated with a TER (Tertiary Entrance Score) in the 90’s.

‘My school was enormously supportive. The little things people did mattered so much. My teachers understood I had training. They prepared work for when I was going away and even offered to come in during the holidays to help. They were great. I never wanted to sacrifice my education because I know that skating doesn’t go on forever.’

The principal of Mount St Benedict, Alan Moran, admired the conscientious way Joanne juggled her commitments.

‘The majority of the competitors at Nagano were full-time skaters’, he says. ‘Joanne was balancing a whole lot of things. In a way, she was a model to kids who have a lot on their plate. She was still growing as aperson and didn’t become consumed by just one thing.’

After her performance at Nagano, Jo was reported as wanting to work on the psychological dimension of her sport. She was quoted as saying that even at such an elite level she can start to feel a bit insecure ‘as though maybe I don’t belong in that group’, meaning the top half dozen or so skaters. This is an area in which Joanne’s faith has a role. For her, prayer is more about finding security than getting things out of God. ‘I talk to God’, she says. ‘I ask Him to look after my family and sense that He looks after me. I really pray much more for confidence than for success.’

Jo says she would not have made it to first base without the support of her parents, Carol and Alan, who arrived from Liverpool, England, in 1973.

‘We were looking for a better way of life and thought we’d give it a go for a couple of years’, explains Carol. ‘But this is well and truly home now.’

One of the things Joanne appreciates about going to Mass at St Bernadette’s in Castle Hill is sharing the experience. ‘I always feel better when I come out of Mass’, she says. ‘It’s a great community thing and one thing we can do together as a family.’

Joanne has thought a lot about Catholicism. Among her favourite subjects at school was history. She finds it reassuring that her religion is that it has ‘a long history’.

‘There is nothing in Catholicism you can’t ask questions about and generally you find the answer has been thought about for a long time. I feel that makes it a safe religion. It doesn’t go with fads and fanatics. It offers a lot deeper meaning than that.’

When looking back on her schooling, Joanne draws attention to the retreat program that she took part in every year. Alan Moran explains that the retreats his students undertake try to begin from where the girls are emotionally and spiritually and move from there to a meeting point between the girls and God. Finally, they are challenged to consider how an encounter with God makes an impact on their lives. When asked to summarise her faith, Joanne says simply that ‘Jesus died for us so we could live.’

Joanne has a lot of living she still wants to do. She was back in Australia for only a few weeks after the Nagano Games before taking off for the World Championships in Minneapolis. Encouraged by her coach, Andrei Pachin, she has high ambitions and is willing to work to attain them. Taking heart from the performance of Zali Steggall who won a bronze medal in Nagano after first appearing at the Olympics in 1992 at the age of 17, she has set her sights on the Winter Olympics in 2002 in Salt Lake City. At least there’s one person looking further ahead than Sydney 2000.