Hannah Southwell says she was no good at ballet, so her parents put her in a boys' rugby league team.
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Starting at age five, she played for years as the only girl in her Kotara Bears sides.
"I loved every second of it," Southwell, now 23 and co-captain of the Knights, told Newcastle Herald.
"Dad was a massive rugby league fan. Mum wouldn't let me play without shoulder pads and head gear, and obviously that's stuck about 10 to 15 years later."
One of the biggest names in the NRLW, Southwell will run out at McDonald Jones Stadium on Sunday to not only play for her hometown club for the first time, but as its first homegrown captain.
It's an honour she couldn't be more proud to achieve.
But had the NRLW not taken off in recent years, Southwell could have very easily been lost to rugby league.
Back at the Bears, once Southwell hit 11, she couldn't keep playing with the boys and there were no female competitions until adult age.
"I had to jump into soccer," Southwell recalled.
"I had shocking feet, so they put me in at goalkeeper because I could catch a ball.
"I hated it at first, to be honest, because it didn't come naturally. But in the end, I really liked it. The only reason I left was because there was an opportunity with rugby sevens."
Southwell fails to mention that she went so well at soccer, that she was part of the Australian youth squad.
Through school, she also tried her hand at almost every sport she could - little athletics, softball, touch footy and cricket, which she was a state representative in.
She went to rugby sevens in her mid-teens and was quickly identified as a potential future star. Only months after taking it up, she was in the Australian women's side.
"I watched the 2016 Olympics and the Aussie sevens girls won gold," Southwell explained. "I said to Dad, 'I want to do that'. I think the next week I quit soccer and jumped over to sevens.
"I had a lot of fun there. I got to play a bit of the game I loved, which was rugby league, even though it wasn't league. But it was the only thing available at the time."
With her love of league still burning inside, Southwell's time in sevens would be short-lived once the NRL announced in late 2017 that it would launch a women's league.
Southwell, then 18, wanted in. She played a season of league in the state competition before debuting with St George Illawarra in the first NRLW round in 2018.
She moved the year after to the Roosters, where she spent the past three seasons.
But after winning a premiership with the Roosters earlier this year, Southwell decided to head home.
It was a bold decision given Newcastle had just gone through their inaugural season without a win, and as a NSW forward, she could have likely attracted interest from any club she wanted.
"It felt like the right time to come back home," she said.
"Watching the girls run out ... for that first game, I saw the crowd and how cool it would be to play at home."
By joining the Knights, Southwell will also get to experience playing alongside sister Jesse, who makes her NRLW debut on Sunday.
"I never thought we'd be able to do it together at Newcastle," she said. "To be able to do it at home is pretty special. We're both so excited."
Reflecting on her sporting journey back to rugby league, Southwell is pleased that the gap between when girls have to stop playing with boys to when they can play in their own competitions is closing.
On the back of the NRLW, female participation numbers have ballooned through modified formats of the game like league tag.
"Looking back, I wish there was a competition to keep going. I missed about eight years of league," Southwell said.
"If I got to play from 11 onwards, I feel like I'd be a completely different player and have developed my skills a little bit faster."
As one of the game's stars, Southwell feels humbled at the thought she is looked up to.
As a young kid playing sports which didn't have professional competitions like they do today, she felt she didn't have an idol to aspire to be.
But that never stopped her dreaming of being a professional sportswoman.
"That was always the goal in the back of my mind, but there was no one where I went, you can make a full-time career out of that," she said.
"A lot has changed, but the only real person was someone like Serena Williams, but I didn't play tennis.
"To be that role model for younger girls coming through, is unreal. That they can see there is a pathway and they can aspire to be doing what we're doing now.
"Hopefully in a couple of years the NRLW is full-time."
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