Jacinda Barclay (18 February 199112 October 2020) was an Australian sportswoman who played

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...

and

Australian rules football Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by k ...

at high levels. She represented the Australian national team in five

Women's Baseball World Cup The Women's Baseball World Cup is an international tournament in which national women's baseball teams from around the world compete. Through its 2012 edition, it was sanctioned by the International Baseball Federation; following the 2013 merger ...

s and played professional football for the

Chicago Bliss The Chicago Bliss is a women's American football team based in the Chicago area. The Bliss is one for the first four teams to participate in the Lingerie Bowl and was carried over to the formation of the Lingerie Football League (LFL) in 2009. S ...

in the

Legends Football League The Extreme Football League (X League) is an American women's semi-professional tackle football league. The league was originally founded in 2009 as the Lingerie Football League (LFL), and later rebranded as the Legends Football League in 2013. ...

and in the

AFL Women's AFL Women's (AFLW) is Australia's national semi-professional Australian rules football league for female players. The first season of the league in February and March 2017 had eight teams; the league expanded to 10 teams in the 2019 season, 1 ...

(AFLW). Citing her success across multiple sports, ''

The Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper ...

'' called Barclay "the

Sonny Bill Williams Sonny Bill Williams (born 3 August 1985) is a New Zealand heavyweight boxer, and a former professional rugby league and rugby union player and as of recently is working for Stan Sports. He is only the List of dual-code rugby internationals#New ...

of women's sport" in 2016.

Early life

Jacinda Barclay was born on 18 February 1991 to New Zealander parents and grew up in Chidlow,

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

(a rural locality in the

Perth Hills Perth Hills is a term used primarily for marketing purposes to identify the part of the Darling Scarp and hinterland east of the scarp that lies within the Shire of Mundaring, City of Swan, and the City of Kalamunda and as part of the constitue ...

), and attended

La Salle College La Salle College (LSC) (, Demonym: Lasallian) is a boys' secondary school in Hong Kong. It was established in 1932 by the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, a Roman Catholic religious teaching order founded by St. John Bapti ...

. She began playing Australian rules football at age 12, before deciding to focus on baseball as a teenager.

Career

Baseball

Barclay spent her junior baseball career on boys' teams. A right-arm

pitcher In baseball, the pitcher is the player who throws ("pitches") the baseball from the pitcher's mound toward the catcher to begin each play, with the goal of retiring a batter, who attempts to either make contact with the pitched ball or draw ...

, she made her state debut for Western Australia at the age of 15 (at the 2006 national championships), and the following year was included in the national squad for the first time. Barclay represented the Australian national team (the Emeralds) in the 2008 World Cup in Japan at the age of 17. She won a silver medal at the

2010 World Cup , image = 2010 FIFA World Cup.svg , size = 200px , caption = ''Ke Nako. (Tswana and Sotho for "It's time") Celebrate Africa's Humanity'It's time. Celebrate Africa's Humanity'' (English)''Dis tyd. Vier Afrika se mensd ...

in Venezuela, and played in three more world cups ( Canada 2012, Japan 2014, and South Korea 2016).

American football

Barclay began playing American football in 2012, while living in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. Her initial attempts to win a contract in the

were thwarted by her visa status. Barclay later signed with the New South Wales Surge for the inaugural 2013–14 season of

LFL Australia The Extreme Football League (X League) is an American women's semi-professional tackle football league. The league was originally founded in 2009 as the Lingerie Football League (LFL), and later rebranded as the Legends Football League in 2013. ...

(the competition's only season so far). She played as a

quarterback The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Ame ...

, leading her team to a title and winning an award as the best offensive player in the league. In 2016, Barclay was scouted by the

in the main LFL competition in the United States. She won a championship in her first season.

Australian rules football

Barclay began playing Australian football at the age of twelve, although she gave it up for a period in order to concentrate on baseball."Emeralds star taking Giant steps forward"
Baseball Australia Media, 13 October 2016. Retrieved 18 February 2017. At amateur level, she played for periods with in the

West Australian Women's Football League The West Australian Women's Football League (WAWFL) was the governing body of women's Australian rules football in the state of Western Australia from 1987 until its dissolution in 2021. It organised the premier women's football league in Wes ...

(WAWFL) and the UNSW Eastern Suburbs Stingrays in the

Sydney Women's AFL The Sydney Women's Australian Football League (SWAFL) was the governing body of the sport of Women's Australian rules football in the state of New South Wales from 2000 to 2011. In 2012 SWAFL ceased to exist and the women's competition came und ...

competition. Barclay represented both Western Australia and NSW/ACT at the

AFL Women's National Championship The AFL Women's National Championship was the premier national and international competition in Women's Australian rules football. The championship was held every year between 1992 and 2015. The tournament was organised by the sport's governing ...

. She was drafted to with the 65th pick overall in the

2016 AFL Women's draft The 2016 AFL Women's draft consisted of the various periods when the eight clubs in the AFL Women's AFL Women's (AFLW) is Australia's national semi-professional Australian rules football in Australia, Australian rules football league for w ...

, and made her senior debut for the club in round one of the 2017 season, against at

Thebarton Oval Thebarton Oval is a sports ground in Adelaide, South Australia currently used for a variety of sports including Australian rules football. It was the home ground of South Australian National Football League (SANFL) club West Torrens Football Clu ...

. After playing six games in 2017, Barclay signed for the 2018 season with Greater Western Sydney during the trade period in May 2017.

AFL Women's statistics

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2020 2020 was heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to global Social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, social and Economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic disruption, mass cancellations and postponements of events, COVID- ...

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Personal life and death

In 2016, Barclay was working in the

professional diving Professional diving is underwater diving where the divers are paid for their work. The procedures are often regulated by legislation and codes of practice as it is an inherently hazardous occupation and the diver works as a member of a team. Du ...

industry as an assistant life support technician and had aspirations to become a sports psychologist. Barclay was found dead at her Perth home on 12 October 2020. Her death was implied to have been a suicide. Barclay was the first contact sportswoman in Australia to donate her brain to the

Australian Sports Brain Bank The Australian Sports Brain Bank is a medical research laboratory, a part of the neuropathology department of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPA) in Sydney. It is headed by neuropathologist Associate Professor Michael Buckland. The bank was est ...

. Researchers uncovered neurological degradation to her cerebral white matter, similar to that found in the brains of former American football players. Damage of this type is thought to be the result of multiple head injuries from contact sports and is linked to an increased risk of suicide, and is also known as

chronic traumatic encephalopathy Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a neurodegenerative disease linked to repeated trauma to the head. The encephalopathy symptoms can include behavioral problems, mood problems, and problems with thinking. The disease often gets worse o ...

In April 2021, Barclay's family and friends interviewed with ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' about her life and death. Remembered as a strong and ambitious figure in women's sports, Barclay was also distressed by the different pay scales and recognition accorded to male and female athletes. Barclay, who had been told she would easily have earned $200,000 a year as a male athlete, was paid $23,059 in 2020 as a tier two player for the Greater Western Sydney Giants women's team. Her struggle to succeed in a business with a far lower ceiling for women than men, combined with her head trauma, was ascribed a factor in her death by her confidants.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Barclay, Jacinda 1991 births 2020 deaths American football quarterbacks Australian female baseball players Australian expatriate sportspeople in the United States Australian players of American football Place of birth missing Australian rules footballers from Western Australia Baseball people from Western Australia Baseball pitchers Greater Western Sydney Giants (AFLW) players Legends Football League players People educated at La Salle College, Perth Sportswomen from Western Australia Footballers who switched code Suicides in Western Australia