“ I’m a Lismore Base baby and I grew up in Rosebank till I was about 14. I played for the local Eureka Soccer Club for all those years. We moved to Sydney when I was in Year 8 and I spent about 7 years there graduating high school in 2012.
The reason we moved to Sydney was because my mum’s father had Dementia so we moved to support him. Originally we moved to a little island on the Northern Beaches called Scotland Island and really enjoyed the boat life there for a few years. We would catch the ferry to and from school which was a great lifestyle. We moved to Mosman which was a bit crazy and then to Newport for a while.
I came back here to the Northern rivers 3 or 4 years ago to Wardell. I share going between my mum in Wardell on a property and my Dad in Lennox Head. I prefer the countryside being around nature but it’s also nice to have the beach and be close to town.
I’ve always loved sport and physical activity. I started Soccer when I was 5 and I’ve been playing for 20 years now. It’s a great way to socialise and get fit. It allows me to go to places I may not necessarily see. I’ve played all sports over the years but Soccer is what I have stuck with.
I have 2 jobs at the moment. I currently work in a health food shop and I also work as a Painter which is my main gig. I’m also into Technology so I build computers. I prefer to be out and about and not staring at a screen but I have to have some balance.
It wasn’t picked up that I had a hearing loss till I was about 4. I was running around in Daycare ignoring all instruction and my Mum took me to a Doctor and they found out I had hearing loss.
I got into the Australian Deaf Football (Soccer) team in 2010. I’ve played one tournament before in 2014 where we went to Taiwan and played a bunch of countries there. That was pretty exciting and a great thing to share with your team mates. The top four teams qualified and we came 5th unfortunately so we just missed out on the spot.
We have tournaments every 4 years and we have one coming up in October. It’s the Asia Deaf Football Tournament. If we qualify for this we can potentially get to the Deaf Olympics. I have really high hopes for this year. We have no excuse as we have a strong team with a lot of younger players coming through. The tournament this October is in Hong Kong and we have to raise our own funds. We have 2 organisations who I guess are supposed to support us. There is Deaf Sports Australia who are the umbrella for any sports related to the deaf community and then we have Deaf Football Australia. I’m not sure whether Deaf Sports are supposed to fund us but we’ve never had any funding from them. We usually have to get local sponsors, pubs and things like that. In the previous tournament we pretty much did it all on our own which was a hard hit. This year is pricey going to Hong Kong. We don’t get sponsorship money-wise but we do get it for the gear we wear. We need to come up with airfares, accommodation and food. It’s costing us between 4 – $5000 per person. We have to pay for our coaching staff and interpreters as well.
We really want to represent Australia the best we can. I suppose because we have to raise our own funds it gives us more desire to get over there and do well. We’ve been training for the last 8 months but we can’t get together too frequently because we are based all over Australia. We have players from Perth, Melbourne. South Australia, QLD and me. I’m the only player from the Northern Rivers / North Coast. We meet in Sydney every now and then to train. It’s really hard to get everyone in the one spot especially that we are all trying to save at the moment. Each one of us have our own fitness regime. We have a great fitness coach, Ray who is behind all the science who sends us food guides and our exercise list. We all have our own goals around fitness which is tailored to our positions.
I’m playing for Alstonville. I spend about 5 days a week on fitness after work. It’s just balancing it all. A positive is I don’t have any time to spend money on anything else. Every dollar I save is going on rent, bills, food and into the Hong Kong trip.
The Gofund me is really helping me. I had hesitations at first to do it as I’ve always wanted to earn my own money and pay my way but I had people tell me they want to support a good cause. If people can’t donate that is so fine but if they could share it that would be awesome. I am excited to represent not only Australia but our area where we live.”