There are few sights in netball more majestic than Uganda’s Mary Cholhok in full flight. When the 6ft 7in shooter leaps through the air it is as if time itself is suspended. Slight, but deceptively powerful, she has impressed and has had the number of several top defenders at the Netball World Cup.
Sitting in her hotel lobby, the 26-year-old beams as she talks about playing in her sport’s first World Cup on African soil. “After this, there will be a lot of netball played in African countries. So many girls will get inspiration from this, seeing their role models and seeing someone like them being out there playing netball,” she says excitedly. “It could maybe change lives because I’ve seen netball transform my life into something amazing.”
Currently based in the UK, where she plays for Loughborough Lightning in the Netball Super League, Cholhok is one of the sport’s greatest success stories.
Originally from South Sudan, her family fled to Uganda as refugees after her father died when she was six. “When you’re a kid, you persevere a lot,” she says. “But looking back now, we didn’t have a lot growing up.”
She discovered netball in secondary school. Nearly twice the height of her peers, she formed an instant connection with the game. “I just fell in love. And then fell in love over and over again.” But just as she was becoming the future of Ugandan netball, her family stopped her from playing, insisting she focus on her studies.
“There’s a culture of early marriages in South Sudan. So if I was promising them good grades, I would stand a chance of finishing my education. But if I didn’t, I’d get married off,” Cholhok says. “Everyone was like: ‘Why are we wasting time? Let’s marry her off.’ So my mum had to have proof the whole time.”
When Cholhok’s school team had a drop in form, the headteacher urged the family to allow her to play again. And for a time she truly thrived. Then, months before her final exams, she became pregnant.
“That was the most depressing time. The way a girl child is, once you get pregnant, you have broken a legacy,” Cholhok says, explaining how her extended family became involved. “I was almost married off to some guy who was ready to marry me.” Adamant the pregnancy would not define her, Cholhok, with her uncle’s approval, gave birth and went to university to pursue her netball. Only two months after enrolling she was called into the national team for the African Netball Championships, an event that would be a stepping stone to her Loughborough Lightning contract and 2019 World Cup debut in Liverpool.
“When I got the opportunity, it was just a blessing. I thought I was going to be a single mother hustling every day to try to feed my child,” Cholhok says. “My timing has never been perfect, like finish school, then do this and then do that. Mine has been like chaos and then blessing, then chaos, then blessing.”
As one of two Ugandans with previous World Cup experience in Cape Town, Cholhok has naturally stepped into a leadership role. For her teammates, getting a professional contract like hers is a dream they all share. “That’s why our coach finds the need to give everyone an opportunity,” Cholhok says. “There’s not a lot of scouts [in Uganda] because there’s a lot of stuff going on in our country so it hinders them and brings the girls down. But everyone that comes here pours their heart into it when they play.”
Other obstacles Uganda face come down to resources and funding. Before their historic fifth-place finish at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, the team trained for two months on outdoor courts in the baking heat. “The government should invest in netball,” Cholhok says passionately. “We’re such an amazing team. When we come here, everyone is just stunned by how we play. Just imagine if we put a lot of work into it: we would be so good.”
Her standout World Cup continued on Friday with Uganda’s 57-46 win over Malawi in their fifth-to-eighth-place playoff, and there are calls for Cholhok to go after the tournament to Australia, the destination for the world’s best players. She is in no rush. She has only just got her son to join her in Loughborough, and says: “When my son’s visa came through I don’t even remember what game I played, I was the happiest I’ve been. I remember I got player of the match straight after. I think it was a home game. And I was the smiliest person on court. I was just so happy inside and you could see that. I was glowing.”
When she does decide to go, therefore, it will be on her terms. “When I go to Australia I want to be the baddest shooter ever,” she says with a grin.
Playing in Australia is not her only future goal. Her big dream is to bring netball to South Sudan so she can help protect girls from a fate that nearly befell her.
“I don’t want to be selfish about sharing this story. Some people would not even share it at all,” she says. “But I want to because I believe my past is the way it is because I’m going to make a difference. My story is the way it is – chaotic and successful – because God has put me in such a position to help others who have gone through the same situation to take a different path.”
