Kiera Austin and I first met Molly Croft at the Sydney Children’s Hospital Radiothon at the end of 2018. At the time she was 12 years old, she was a netty nerd like us, and she was fighting a high-grade osteosarcoma by going through some of the worst chemotherapy there is. She had the biggest scar on her leg but an even bigger smile. This kid and her beautiful family are the bravest and most grateful people I have ever met, and they have changed my outlook on life in so many ways.
Over 2019 Kiera and I grew closer with the Crofts. Molly became an inspiration for me during my first year in the Giants Netball team. She gave me so much purpose, and the smile she had when we visited her at Ronald McDonald House made all the hard parts of elite sport more than worth it.
When off-season came around and I started thinking about The Tie-Dye project for 2019, I found myself in the presence of a tie-dying guru. Molly just so happened to love tie-dying and was more than happy to get involved in the project. With Molly jumping on board (and with her, the entire town of Dubbo), we went from selling a couple of hundred t-shirts to selling 1000! In 2019, with the help of lots of very amazing people and some very important sponsors, we raised nearly $25,000 (more than 5 times what we had raised the year before).