I am born with dislocation of the hip and hip dysplasia, which caused my bones to develop in a wrong way. Because of this I suffer from chronic pains and I cannot walk long distances or stand for a long time and most movements with the legs are difficult and painful. In my early life, I did everything I wanted to with a lot of enthousiasm. Back then, tennis was the sport that I liked most and it still is. After playing for five years, I had to quit because of physical deterioration. This was hard, because this was the first time that I was really restricted in what I wanted to do. After many surgeries I was no longer able to do the things I loved and enjoyed in life. No more running, jumping around, playing tennis, I was only able to walk for small periods of time and distances and was told to live carefully, because there was no more the doctors were able to do for me.

After a year and a half I found a wheelchairtennis group on facebook, by accident. Here I was introduced to wheelchairtennis for the first time and I have to be honest and tell you that I did not like it at all. I compared it to abled body tennis, which I should not have done, because it is such a different sort of sport. I was able to look at it differently and I started to really enjoy playing. 

I like it so much that I started to play tournaments troughout the Netherlands in 2016. It was surprisingly succesfull, within a year I was playing tournaments on the highest national level. This was a sign for me. Not playing for a year, but already winning a match from the number 7 of the Netherlands. It was time for me to take wheelchairtennis to the next level and so I started my search for a private coach. At the ABN AMRO WTT in february 2016 in Ahoy, I met former National coach wheelchairtennis, Marc Kalkman. At this moment, he has been my private coach for two or three days a week in Hilversum up until 2019.  Also I played two times a week in Almere, with the national coach Dennis Sporrel and the Dutch team. Now I am training three days a week in Spijkenisse with Stefan Weeda at LTC Spijkenisse and I train with the Dutch team three days a week. 

I am very ambitious and with hard work, I should be able to meet my goals. In 2017 I started playing international tournaments outside of the Netherland to climb up on the world ranking and I ended as the 40th in singles and 38th in doubles. Besides my main goal of reaching the Paralympic Games in Tokyo (2020), I would love to give back to the community... I want to give back to my hometown of Spijkenisse, by putting them on the map with my achievements, but also help them stimulate disabled sports and show our community that doing nothing is never the right answer! 

2018 has been a great year, with big achievements but also very deep lows... I have learned so much about myself and being on tour and how to deal with mental issues, that I am hopeful to show what I learned on and off court the coming year.