Born: Margaret River, WA
4 August, 1958
In 11 years of representative hockey, Marian Aylmore ascended from playing in a Western Australian under-age team to captaining Australia and being acknowledged as one of the world’s finest players.
At international level she played 50 matches for Australia, including the 1984 Olympic tournament in Los Angeles. This was some compensation for her disappointment at missing the 1980 Moscow Olympics when Australian hockey officials decided to boycott the Games.
Marian’s contribution to Australia’s build-up in women’s hockey during the 1980s was an important factor behind the team’s gold medal performance in Seoul in 1988. Marian Bell was just eight years of age when she was introduced to hockey in the small South-West town of Cowaramup. She soon developed into a fiercely competitive right-inner and playmaker with dazzling speed and stick skills and uncanny dribbling artistry in confined spaces.
In 1983 she captained Australia 10 times, including at the World Cup, before retiring temporarily to prepare for the birth of her daughter in February 1984. Five months later she was competing at the Los Angeles Olympics.
The curtain came down on her international career after those Games and though she did not play for WA again, she continued her long connection with Grads, who had amalgamated with the men’s clubs Cricketers and Claremont-Collegians to form the powerful Westside Wolves.
Her senior career began when she joined Grads at the age of 10, after moving to the city. A year in E1 Grade was followed by promotion to A2 Grade and she first won State selection at 15 when she was picked in the WA Schoolgirls side in 1973. This led to All-Australian selection.
She first played for the WA senior team 1974 and for a decade was an automatic choice, compiling 50 State games and finishing as captain. She was a member of the Australian team that won the American Cup tournament in the U.S. in 1980.
All four of her sisters played hockey. Janice joined Marian in the WA and Australian sides of the 1970s, while Wendy, Shirley and Annette all played grade hockey in Perth.