Elizabeth Margaret Ellis, is a retired Australian netball player, a member of the national team from 1992 until 2007 and captain for the last four of those years. She is the most capped international player for Australian netball. Liz Ellis was inducted to the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2006.
After attending the AIS in 1991–1992, Ellis made her debut for the Australian Netball Team in July 1993 against Wales. It was the 1995 World Championships in Birmingham where she stamped her mark on the international netball scene with a sterling performance in the grand final against South Africa. She went on to be a mainstay of the Australian Netball Team, participating in the 1995, 1999, 2003 and 2007 World Championships and the 2002 and 2006 Commonwealth Games. She was named Vice-Captain of the team in 2000 and Captain in 2004 and broke the record for the highest number of tests played for Australia in 2005. She was named Australian Netball's Most Valued Player on four occasions – 1996, 1998, 2002 and 2006. Ellis became the captain of the Sydney Swifts in 2000. She was the captain for their team in 2001, 2004, 2006 and 2007 Commonwealth Bank Trophy premierships. She played her entire domestic career for the Swifts and holds the record for the most games played in the Commonwealth Bank Trophy. In October 2005, Ellis suffered a career-threatening knee injury in a match against New Zealand in Auckland. She defied the critics by making a full recovery from a full knee reconstruction and producing some of the best netball of her career in the two years that followed. Ellis announced her retirement from netball on 19 November 2007, two days after leading Australia to a World Championship victory over New Zealand. Since her retirement, Ellis has been a netball commentator, working initially for Fox Sports and Network Ten during their coverage of the ANZ Championship and Australian Diamonds test matches. She moved to the Nine Network when it picked up the rights to the Suncorp Super Netball league, and became a regular panellist on the network's weekly Sports Sunday program. In January 2018 Ellis became an Officer of the Order of Australia for "distinguished service to netball as an elite player and coach, through support and advocacy for young women, as a contributor to the broadcast and print media industries, and to the community". In recognition of her outstanding career, since 2008 the highest individual accolade awarded to an Australian netball athlete has been the annual Liz Ellis Diamond. In 2019, she was inducted into Hall of Fame at Australian Women's Health Sport Awards.
Personal life
On 31 March 2011, Ellis announced that she was pregnant. On 28 September 2011, she gave birth to her first child, Evelyn Audrey Stocks, at Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. On 21 October 2015, Ellis announced on "The Project" that after several rounds of IVF and three miscarriages, she was pregnant with her second child. Austin Ralph Stocks was born 4April 2016. Liz Ellis wrote a book in 2018 on her experiences with her troubles having children, the book is called "If at First You Don't Conceive" throughout it she talks about her troubles having children and how it worked out for her family. The book launched on 24 April 2018.
