Gaze switches to Adelaide
TweetAUSTRALIAN basketball's most famous name - Gaze - will be on the lips of MAC Adelaide Lightning fans next WNBL season with Kate Gaze signing on for 2018-19.
Gaze, 28 and 178cm, joins a versatile and interchangeable Adelaide backcourt featuring Aimee Clydesdale, Nicole Seekamp, Stephanie Blicavs and Lauren Nicholson.
She is the grand-daughter of former Opals coach Tony Gaze, Lindsay Gaze’s brother, and her parents are Mark Gaze, who played NBL for Frankston Bears and Melbourne Tigers, and WNBL championship winner Michelle O’Connor.
Her second cousin is Andrew Gaze.
So do questions about that family connection ever get tedious?
“I don't get sick of it, obviously it gets brought up a lot but I'm very proud of it,” she told an interviewer recently.
“The basketball knowledge my whole family has I draw from on a daily basis.”
Gaze spent the past two seasons with the Canberra Capitals after two years under current Lightning coach Chris Lucas at Townsville Fire.
She won two championships with Lucas after returning to Australia from a US college career at St Mary’s in California.
Last season with the Caps, Gaze averaged 7.4ppg, 1.7rpg and 1.5 apg.
She is the second major signing for the club in two days following Blicavs’ confirmation today.
A Commonwealth Games Gold Medallist and 2017 FIBA Asia Cup Silver Medal-winning Opal, Blicavs joins Adelaide on a one-year deal.
Like Gaze a dual-WNBL champion - they played together in Townsville for one of them - Blicavs is the daughter-in-law of South Australian playing great Andris Blicavs, a dual-Woollacott Medallist and Boomers Olympian and captain.
“I’m really, really excited. I’ve had Chris as a coach before and I like the way he goes about what he does and I’m really, really excited to be joining the group. I think it’s always good to do something new and especially at this point in my career, it’s always good to explore all your options and I think Adelaide will be a really good fit for me,” she said.
DUAL CHAMP: Kate Gaze in action for Townsville against Sydney's Alex Wilson.