A long way to the top of her game Karyn Howarth wants a Vixens premiership against the Thunderbirds next weekend to celebrate when her 27th birthday rolls around. Photo: Michael Clayton-Jones Ask Karyn Howarth about the potholed road she has travelled to reach the starting goal shooter's position with the Melbourne Vixens, a bumpy track that has wound through three states and both territories across 13 years, and she sighs, laughs and then declares: "Oh my god! How long have you got? Long enough. Plenty of time to hear how the fourth of seven girls in a blended RAAF family left home at the age of 14 to accept a scholarship at the Northern Territory Institute of Sport, then intermittently yearned for the support and stability she later lacked. About Howarth's subsequent stints in Brisbane, Canberra and Newcastle before the call that drew her back from Cairns to her birthplace. About waning motivation, lost years, and making the most of those that are left. Howarth turns 27 later this month. Her goal is to celebrate it with a Vixens premiership against the Thunderbirds next weekend. First, though, is the home preliminary final against one of her former teams, the Queensland Firebirds. And if there are bigger (see Romelda Aiken) and better (such as Madison Browne) players elsewhere on the court, the performance of the hosts' 192-centimetre spearhead will also be critical to the outcome. "I know that obviously if I stand up and I'm a target that it lifts everyone around me," says Howarth, the second-year Vixen who has averaged 27 goals at 84 per cent in her 12 games this season, having missed two rounds with a knee injury. Adds champion goal attack Sharelle McMahon: "Karyn can be such a strong focal point for us when she's strong and confidently putting the ball up. She's been doing great, and she'll only get better and better the more experience that she has. She's an incredibly competitive person, and I really like that she's got that real fire and spark. Yet, curiously, the former Karyn Bailey is famously poker-faced on court, even if she confesses that the impassive facade of someone who once revealed too much masks the emotions that still swirl within. "It just appears that nothing fazes me on court," she says. Trust me, I still feel the nerves and I still get anxious, I still get disappointed, I get frustrated, I feel all of those emotions that every player feels, but I don't show them. The game just gone, the first two minutes, I remember saying to Tegan [Caldwell] 'my hands won't stop shaking'. Everyone tells me I was so cool and calm in that game, and I'm like, 'if only you were in my body'. Still, it is not just her stronger, fitter body, but also her mind that Howarth believes is now in better shape. After three years with the Victorian Fury in the ANZ Championship's feeder league, she was so ecstatic to have joined the Vixens in 2012 she claims to have only a blurry recall of the season she began as a bench player before eventually dislodging former Diamond Kate Beveridge from the starting seven. This year, in contrast, she insists she is far better prepared. I'm happy to have the pressure on me; I sort of welcome it now, as opposed to being a little bit scared of it. I still watch games and I still go, 'you could have pulled that ball in, or there's so much more you can do', but when I look at games last year as compared to this year I've improved so much. Yet it was not so long ago that she was drifting, going through the motions with the Fury, unsure where she was headed. "I was at the crossroads, really," she admits. It was only really [in 2011] that I decided that I wanted to give it another shot, and I really put that down to the fact that I have a wonderful husband, Jamie, who pretty much said to me, 'you're not getting any younger, so if you want to do it, you've got to make up your mind'. For me I think it was about finding a balance in life. I wanted that family, I wanted that home. I wanted the pets, I wanted the structure of the work and everything to fall into place before I could potentially go and try for that dream. So does she ever wonder how different things might have been? Feel that she wasted valuable years? I do. I honestly do. I turn 27 [on July 28], so I sort of sit there and go, 'well, I need to achieve what I want to achieve in netball in four years, as opposed to eight years if I hadn't stopped, or if I'd tried earlier'. But then I look at it from the other point of view and I go, 'well, if your heart's not in it, if you're not 100 per cent into it, you cannot be a Vixen. You cannot physically put your body through the training, through recoveries, put your body on the line, if you don't want to do it'. I don't think [that with] my head space I could have done it earlier, so I'm happy that I got the second opportunity ... I just have to make the best of what I've got. That is a settled home life in Melbourne's outer east, an administrative position at Monash University, a place in the Diamonds squad, the chance to reach a second grand final in two seasons with the Vixens, and the experience gained through a transient past that included time with the now-defunct Hunter Jaegers (2007) and AIS Canberra Darters (2006) as well as the Firebirds (2005). Indeed, along what McMahon describes as "kind of an unusual path" to the elite level, Howarth's lonely year in Brisbane now seems like another lifetime, before a journey she could never have imagined. When someone says to me, 'oh, so how did you get here?', I just answer, like I said to you, 'how long do you have?' I've been everywhere, literally, and I think that's a great thing," Howarth says. I wouldn't change anything, I honestly wouldn't. I never thought that I'd be in Melbourne, or I'd be playing for the Vixens, or I'd make an Australian squad, I never thought that was possible, but it is, and I've done it, so what else can I achieve?