Louise Bawden | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Personal information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Nationality | Australia | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Born | Melbourne, Victoria, Australia | 7 August 1981||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Height | 183 cm (6 ft 0 in) (2012) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Weight | 72 kg (159 lb) (2012) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Beach volleyball information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Honours
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Louise Bawden (born 7 August 1981) [1] is an Australian volleyball and beach volleyball player. She represented Australia at the 2000 Summer Olympics in indoor volleyball, finishing in 9th. [2] She was selected to represent Australia at the 2012 Summer Olympics in beach volleyball, but she and team-mate Becchara Palmer did not qualify from the pool stage. [2]
Bawden was born in Melbourne, Victoria and attended Fintona Girls' School. [3] [4] She spent her childhood in Melbourne, [3] [4] moving to Canberra when she was sixteen. [3] She then moved to the Netherlands after the Sydney Olympics, returning to Australia in 2003. [3] In 2008, she completed a degree at a university in Queensland. [4] She attended the 2008 Summer Olympics as a fan. [4] As of 2012 [update], she lives in Adelaide. [3] [5]
Bawden is 183 centimetres (6 ft 0 in) tall and weighs 72 kilograms (159 lb). [3]
Bawden earned a volleyball scholarship at the Australian Institute of Sport when she was sixteen years old. [3] As a nineteen-year-old, she represented Australia at the 2000 Summer Olympics in indoor volleyball, where her team finished ninth. [3] [4] Following the Sydney Games, she played professional volleyball in the Netherlands until 2003. [3] In 2002, she competed in the World Championships. [3]
Bawden is a beach volleyball player. [3] Following the 2008 Summer Olympics, she approached the Adelaide-based Australian beach volley programme about the possibility of getting into the sport. [4] Following this, in 2009, she became involved with Australia's National Beach Volleyball Program, making a switch from indoor to beach and was initially teamed up with Becchara Palmer. [3] [5] That year, she shared the world beach volleyball association top rookie award with Angie Akers, an American. [3]
At the 2009 Mazury Open in Stare Jablonki, Poland, Bawden and partner Palmer finished second. The competition was part of the FIVB World Tour. [3] [6] She and Palmer twice won the Australian Championships, once in 2010 and again in 2011. [6]
In 2011, Palmer and Bawden were Australia's number one ranked team, [3] and the duo finished ninth at the 2011 World Championships. [5] With her partner Palmer, she finished seventeenth at the 2011 FIVB Moscow World Tour in Moscow, Russia. [3] With her partner, she finished fourth at the 2011 FIVB Phuket World Tour in Phuket, Thailand. [3]
In 2012, Bawden and Palmer played in 31 matches, winning 20 of them. This increased their world ranking to 16. [3] With her partner, she finished ninth at the 2012 FIVB Brasília World Tour in Brasília, Brazil. [3] With her partner, she finished fifth at the 2012 FIVB Sanya World Tour in Sanya, China. [3] With her partner, she finished seventeenth at the 2012 FIVB Shanghai World Tour in Shanghai, China. [3] With her partner, she finished ninth at the 2012 FIVB Beijing World Tour in Beijing, China. [3] With her partner, she finished ninth at the 2012 FIVB Rome World Tour in Rome, Italy, [3] [5] [7] which secured her Olympic berth. [5] [7] With her partner, she finished fifth at the 2012 FIVB Moscow World Tour in Moscow, Russia. [3]
Bawden was selected to represent Australia at the 2012 Summer Olympics in beach volleyball, [3] [5] [7] in June 2012 following a selection process that was 18 months long and involved becoming one of the sixteen top ranked teams in the world. [4] [5] Going into the Olympics, her team was ranked fourteenth in the world, but did not qualify from the pool stages. [2] [5] [7]
She participated in the 2016 summer Olympics in Rio with partner Taliqua Clancy, and made it to the Quarter-finals. [8] [9]