What was your first experience of sports, and sitting volleyball in particular?

I started out with swimming as a kid, but since my entire family played table tennis, I didn't really have a choice as to start playing as well 😅. I did both sports simultaneously for a while, and then stopped swimming when I was seventeen. When I had my car accident at the age of 20, I started playing para table tennis at first. At some point, I got a little bit tired of spending all my time in the table tennis hall - because I was also working in table tennis as an organiser of the German table tennis centre. My first encounter with sitting volleyball was when I was present as a reporter for the German Paralympic committee in Rio 2016 and covered both table tennis and sitting volleyball. I immediately loved the dynamics of the Sport and its thrill.

What made you decide to become a sitting volleyball athlete?

As I said before, at some point I decided to stop my table tennis career. Since I still wanted to be active in some kind of sport, I went to try out sitting volleyball. Even though every part of my body hurt after the first practice, I was caught at once and started to go to practice in Leverkusen. It was a new experience to be active in a teamsport and I enjoyed it so much.