If I don’t look in the mirror I think I’m 30 again playing croquet!

Mary McMahon played squash for years. She was competitive, driven, and good at it. Then she retired, and the competition stopped.

The structure that had shaped her weeks for decades was just gone.

“I had no idea what that day was going to do for me and my life,” Mary explains. “It brought back everything I had in my younger days, the days I was competing with squash. And it’s not until I look in the mirror of the morning do I wonder where that old lady came from.”

The Moment Everything Changed

It started when she watched a Queensland State Team player hit a perfect jump shot. “I thought he was a genius,” she says. “I thought, ‘Oh my God. Fancy being able to do that.’” Then she watched Peter Nicholson, a Queensland state player, in action. That proved pivotal.

“He’d see a hoop, he’d just go for it, and through it would go sailing through,” she recalls. “And I made a commitment to myself then. I wanna get that good. I wanna be able to do what he can do.”

“I had no idea what that day was going to do for me and my life.”

That’s when the competitive side kicked back in.

She started practising. A lot. Croquet had gone from a social game to something she wanted to master.

“I have now a goal,” she says. “I have a reason to practice.”

“I’ve got everything now that I had then.”

For Mary, croquet gave back what retiring from squash took away. A goal, a reason to practise, and people watching to see how she goes.