When I rolled into Stadium Australia at the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games, I thought I’d lived the sporting dream. I was a young Australian Paralympian with a throwing circle at my feet and a crowd that roared like the ocean. Two and a half decades later, I’ve laced up a very different dream: trading discus and shot put for carbon-fibre sticks, steel sled runners and the cold bite of a Slovakian rink.

This is the story behind our history-making first step: Australia’s debut at the inaugural Women’s Para Ice Hockey World Championships in Dolný Kubín, Slovakia. We didn’t fly across the world because we were certain to win. We went because we’re certain this is where Australia’s future in winter para sport begins.

Starting again…

Like everyone currently living through this pandemic, my life feels like it’s in a holding pattern, just waiting to get back to life as we knew it. 

This is not the first time my life has been put on hold, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.  In 2017, after a long 2-year slow road to recovery, my life was derailed once again by a small cut on the back of my leg and I found myself back in hospital.  Now, I’m no stranger to hospitals as I have been in and out of them since I was born for one reason or another, but for this particular wound I was hospitalised a second time to finally finish my healing, and to hopefully put an end to the constant dressing changes, medication, hospital stays, multiple surgeries, fevers, needles, uncertainty and generally feeling unwell the whole time.  I had been trying to heal my body naturally up until this point, but it would not cooperate. It would not heal to the point of full recovery and I had to do something about it to finish this chapter and have the freedom to move on, to start life again.