I grew up in a small village, almost directly on the Dutch border, called Emlichheim. Almost every resident of this idyllic village knows about the volleyball department at SC Union. It's a big sports family. There wasn't a weekend that went by without me or my parents taking us to do some sports. Be it football, dodgeball, handball or volleyball. The Emlichheim collective municipality, consisting of almost 7,000 residents, has already
successful volleyball players like Andrea Berg, Mareike Hindriksen and my later roommate Jana-Franziska Poll. The basis of the success is an amazing youth work, characterized by a lot of passion and heart and soul as well as many voluntary supporters.
But now to me: All beginnings are difficult!
My first contact with volleyball began 23 years ago. At the age of six, right after starting school, I held a volleyball in my hands for the first time. My first attempts began with the "minis". Once a week we cycled to training on our "fietsen". The first steps on the 9x9m volleyball court were characterized by classic catching and throwing as well as the uniform, very playful warm-up. We were even involved in setting up and taking down the net. However, my enthusiasm was short-lived. Our trainer, who later became my physics teacher, always whistled loudly when an exercise was over or when we had been fooling around too much. This whistling put me off and frightened me so much that after about 20 minutes I sat down to the side and just wanted to watch the training from the outside. I was back at the start for the final game "Fire, Water and Danger".
After a year, I joined the SCU E-youth team and we played three against three for the first time. I had a lot of fun with my friends and we met up almost every day after school to play volleyball. On the playground or at home on the homemade swing, we always found a place to pass the ball back and forth. We were trained by players from the SCU first women's team, among others. That was an absolute highlight. My youth coach at the time, Anika Brinkmann, trained me for a total of three years. Everything from the stem step to the defensive role was included. I definitely have her to thank for the good training. Even when we were young, she practiced with us to endure situations and cheer on our teammates. For example, we always had to smash, dig and hit against the wall. We were only allowed to change elements after ten faultless contacts. Training only ended when all the girls had managed ten serves without making any mistakes. It sounds like a lot at first, but in the end it made us stronger. Of course, there was never a lack of fun and new exercises and games were added regularly.
My change to secondary school
At the age of ten, I moved from primary school to secondary school. I was in the fifth grade and was happy that some of the girls from my volleyball team were also in my class or at the same school. We had long considered whether I should switch to the local high school, but my parents listened to their gut feeling and sent me to secondary school. In the end, it was probably the best decision. Because I got good grades and had enough time to devote to volleyball.
Even with the Emlichheim secondary school, we regularly made it to the final week of 'Youth Trains for the Olympics' in Berlin. That was a huge success, because we were often able to put together a strong team thanks to our large number of players. The biggest highlight was reaching the final, when the sports high school from Berlin put an end to our winning streak. With beautiful sunshine, we girls were welcomed to the village for the annual Whitsun festival with a carriage ride. I will probably always remember that moment, how we drove through the village laughing and in good spirits and could hardly believe our luck that we girls from the village in the big city had reached the final.
Playing practice makes it
In addition to the daily stress of school, homework and volleyball, I managed to move up a team every year. It must be said that it is really unusual for a sports club to be represented in so many league classes. The league ranged from the district league, to the regional league, district league, state league, association league, upper league, regional league and even the second Bundesliga. So I had optimal conditions to develop and to strive for new goals and challenges every year. In addition to the normal team operations, the numerous youth championships also kept us on our toes. I often had to juggle too many things at once. So it happened that in one year I played for the U16, U18 and U20 of the SCU Emlichheim. This meant that volleyball was played almost every weekend, i.e. Saturdays and Sundays. Normal league operations were on the schedule on Saturdays and the youth championships on Sundays. Then at some point there were also training courses for the state selection, for which we also took part in the regional league operations. My parents regularly drove to the competitions either privately or in the club bus to support us. I can still see them sitting in the stands with big drums and cheering us on. My father started to note down the many kilometers we had covered on the motorway. When we reached over 200,000 km he stopped counting...
My first game in the first team of SCU Emlichheim
At the age of 14, I played my first game for the first team of my hometown club. A dream came true and at that time there was nothing greater for me than to finally play in the second Bundesliga. At that time I helped out at the home game between Emlichheim and Oythe and before I knew it I was on the field. It was a special game because our opponents from Oythe consisted of many former SCU players and of course we wanted to win. In the end we won in the tiebreak and even shed a few tears of joy as we celebrated. In the following season I was a permanent part of the first women's team as the team's youngest.
A little fun fact: It's hard to believe, but I was regularly replaced as libero because my reception was simply not good enough and our middle blocker was simply better at receiving at the time. Nevertheless, I played in every game and was able to make it into the starting six at the end. This did not go unnoticed by the youth national coach from Berlin at the time and so fate took its course...