Grand Final farewell icing on cake for Burton

Featured image: Madeleine Clark | @madeleineclarkmedia

She is already one of Western Australia's most decorated basketballers and was retiring no matter how the season ended for Warwick Senators, but four-time champion and Olympian Nat Burton sure is glad to finish in an NBL1 West Grand Final at RAC Arena.

Burton started her SBL career at the Perry Lakes Hawks in 2006 as a 17-year-old and now over the last 20 years what she has done is confirm herself as one of the best centres Australian basketball has ever had and has cemented a legacy to last a lifetime.

Her accolades speak for themselves having won championships with Perry Lakes in 2007, 2008 and 2017, and then after joining the Warwick Senators in 2022, won both an NBL1 West and National Finals championships that first year, and it's where she has played out her career since.

Beyond that, Burton attended West Virginia University, played with distinction throughout Europe including winning a championship in Germany with Herner TC, and had a distinguished WNBL career with her hometown West Coast Waves/Perth Lynx along with Melbourne Boomers and Sydney Flames.

She also became a regular in the Australian Opals including going to the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, and winning bronze at the 2014 World Cup in Türkiye.

But beyond her playing accolades, Burton has already had a stint as an assistant coach with the Perth Lynx and now has used her own ups and downs of a professional playing career to turn that towards helping the next and current generation of players through Enriched Athletes.

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That means that Burton is in a good place to now accept that her state league playing career is over having already had to deal with all the emotions of ending her professional career ending back in 2021 before turning her attention to her business and an assistant coach role at the Lynx.

What she didn’t realise was just how hard it would be to stop playing altogether especially when she found she was still enjoying the playing side of it along with being part of that team environment like she did with a Senators team that reached the Grand Final in 2025.

That's why it was an easy decision to play on in 2026, but it hasn’t quite gone as smoothly on a personal front as she hoped just on a physical point of view meaning the 37-year-old had little trouble deciding this would be it for her playing days.

Burton was content with that decision no matter how the season panned out for the Senators, but sure isn't complaining that her last game now gets to take place at RAC Arena on Saturday in the Grand Final against the Cockburn Cougars.

"It does feel like the perfect way to finish and it is not something that I needed to happen, and it was going to happen regardless this season, but for us to now be here and for it to be a Grand Final it's just the ultimate icing on the cake," Burton said.

"Even just this week and the whole finals series, I don’t get caught up in the outcome if we're going to win or not, but just getting to experience these moments is what you cherish.

"And a Grand Final lead up is so fun because everything is geared towards this one big game at this big venue, and there's so much excitement around it. Each day has its own little unique thing that's special about it.

"We've got our training sessions, we're all talking about Saturday and it's so fun to be part of. I've just been really committed to living in each of those moments and that means at times it's pretty emotional because there's a lot that I am going to miss, but I get to have this whole experience.

"I get to play another the Grand Final and for that to be my goodbye to this relationship that I've had with basketball for 25 years. I can't think of a better way to end it than that."

Team in a much better place this year

When Burton reflects on the differences to last year's Grand Final appearance for the Senators where they also played the Cougars at RAC Arena, and they are quite stark.

While Burton had never enjoyed basketball more than she had last year herself, by Grand Final time it was like a casualty ward at the Senators with their loaded back court suddenly decimated with Robbi Ryan, Emma Gandini and Chloe Forster all sidelined.

While Forster and Gandini were able to get on the court for the Grand Final, it was following long absences and this year for Warwick coming into the Grand Final, at least on a physical front they are in a much better place.

They have three WNBL-experienced stars in the back court with Forster, Jayda Clark and Kyana Weir, Mackenzie Clinch Hoycard is playing and leading as well as ever, and then there's the addition of Great Kampschroeder along with Kiara Waite up front.

Burton knows that the key under coaches Brad Robbins and Paul Rogers is just focusing on what this Senators team does well, and that's all they are worried about heading into the Grand Final.

"I haven't really looked back on the struggles that we had last season and I remember having such a strong, dominant season, and then when we had those injuries in the back end of it, it felt like we were just scraping through," Burton said.

"This season has been up and down, and it's been like that for most teams, and no one really knew who was going to win on any given weekend.

"We were part of that and I think the last couple of games have felt amazing and we've been playing really well, and we know that when we are playing our best, we're playing phenomenal basketball that is fun.

"It doesn't matter who we're playing, it's just fun for us to play and we're really clear on that. That feels really good, but it doesn’t feel like we're getting ahead of ourselves or are too fixated on the last time we played Cockburn when it wasn’t very pretty.

"We're just really focused on doing it with each other and when we look at each other in the warm ups and we smile and are locked in, you can't really manufacture that.

"It's something that's there and it's our job to make sure that anything that takes us away from that, we put to bed and come back to what we do we when we're playing great basketball together."

Fitting last battle with a familiar foe

Another aspect that makes Saturday's Grand Final a fascinating one in so many ways is that when Burton is on the court, she'll be going up against Cougars centre Jessie Edwards more than likely.

That's the same Edwards who was a teammate of Burton's when she first returned from college to play with the West Coast Waves, who she was an assistant coach for with the Perth Lynx, and for a lot of the past decade has gone to war with in a basketball sense on SBL/NBL1 floors.

Edwards just happens to be playing the best basketball of her life in 2026 too as the NBL1 West MVP coming off being part of a WNBL championship with the Townsville Fire.

"It's really cool to look back at when I was younger and when Jessie was even more young, and it's interesting to know that I'm retiring and that's forced me to look back and see someone such as Jessie who has been part of that for a long time," Burton said.

"It's cool to be playing another game against her and I think Jessie's done incredible things in her basketball career and she's gone under the radar for a very long time.

"If you look at what she's achieved and that doesn't go under the radar, and I don’t know if it surprises people what she's achieved.

"But she's a WNBL champion, she's now an MVP in NBL1 and that doesn’t happen for everyone so it's really incredible and when anyone from WA achieves these things it should be celebrated by everyone.

"It's cool to be out there with her but I still want to beat her just as much as ever and we're both competitors, but it's also an interesting spot to be in to be retiring and on the court that's been in that journey for a long time as well."

Ready to give more to other parts of life

While Burton has always been able to juggle multiple things in life and that included her own business, playing and being a WNBL assistant coach all at once, she is looking forward to being able to now fully throw herself into her business.

She certainly could continue to manage playing and her work, and she might still end up coaching at some point and juggling her business, but in the immediate future she is looking forward to just having that as her focus and not having to think about everything that goes into still playing basketball at a high level.

"It's been interesting and I feel like people in my life when I've told them I'm retiring have just said that they've heard that plenty of times over the last three or four years when I've always thought it might be the last one," Burton said.

"Then last year that whole season was so much fun and I loved basketball again, and I loved playing so I thought if I enjoyed it that much it wasn’t the time to finish.

"That's why I decided to come around again this season but I always thought this would probably be it. My work was picking up, I've got some incredible new work and teams that I'm working with that I'm noticing are taking up a lot more of my mental energy and passion.

"I want to give more to that than I do to me playing basketball. While I still could do both, and I wanted to this year, now it's kinda team to step away."

Having a more challenging season

There's every chance that Burton has never had a season of her entire career she enjoyed as much as 2025 both from a personal and team perspective with the Senators which is why she was so keen to play on again in 2026.

She then always had it in her mind that this would be her last season. It hasn’t quite gone to plan and maybe her body's telling her it's time to retire too, but still that only builds resilience and she's had to find ways to still contribute as much as possible.

"It was an interesting season for me because I've been battling with some injuries so my body has been telling me that if mentally I said it was my last one, it was going to make sure of it," Burton said.

"It's been hard in that regard and I want to be really open about that because it has been a challenge mentally more than anything not so much that I'm retiring, but it's been painful and I haven’t been able to play how I wanted to play or wish I could play.

"It's been a lot of frustration and pushing against that for a lot of it, and until people have helped me realise that there's so much more to it than that.

"That's what has flipped my mindset to enjoying all the little moments and if I'm there to come off the bench and support my teammates, and if I can't train, I can still sit on the bike and encourage.

"So looking at the other ways that I can be a part of it and am still a part of this incredible team and community is something I've been forced to focus on. It's been challenging, but I wouldn’t change it and I can't change it, and there's still so much there."

Work will now naturally change

Through Burton's Enriched Athletes mindset and high-performance mentoring business she has established since the end of her professional playing career, she's always been able to help athletes and teams from the perspective of being a player herself.

While a lot of the work she'll continue to do won't change, one area she sees she'll now be able to become even more helpful in is because of what she's about to go through with dealing with the end of playing basketball at a high level.

There are some things you really don't know what they will be like until experiencing it and going through it yourself, so Burton has no doubt that this retirement process herself will allow her to help athletes even more moving forward.

"I don’t think I know what it's going to be exactly like and the work will be the same but I love that I've been able to stay really close to the experience of being an athlete because I still have been playing," Burton said.

"I never wanted to turn into someone who tells athletes what to do and tells them how they should be feeling while forgetting what it's like being in their position.

"I don’t think I will because I'm a very reflective and introspective person in that regard, but my work will naturally change. Even just over the last few months and dealing with retirement and starting to process that, I'm already seeing things differently.

"What I'll learn through this phase is unimaginable almost and it will be an amazing period of growth as I process with the different phases of saying goodbye to playing basketball and everything that goes with that.

"I have no doubt that it will shape the work I'm doing with athletes that are still playing but also I want to start to help athletes who are going to retire or going through the same period.

"I think it's an area that is very underserviced and can be tumultuous for people. I'm about to go and live that so we'll see what happens, but I'm also very excited to take those learnings and start to share those as I gather another experience under my belt."