After a short night’s rest, I am about to leave for tranings sessions again. It is still unreal, from going to the Junior Masters for the first time to coming home with two world titles. To give you an idea of how my week went, I will take you back to January 26, 2020. This was the day we left for Tarbes, together with Jinte Bos, Niels Vink, Xavier Donker, Colin Sal and Robin Ammerlaan.
We started with three training days, during which we trained with all the players present and received training from different coaches. Thursday January 30 it was time and the official competitions started. With the girls we were in one poule; Jade Lanai (Brazil), Hayley Slocombe (Australia), Jinte Bos and I from the Netherlands. My first match was immediately exciting against Jinte, which shows the result of 7-6 (tie break 7-1), 1-6, 6-0. This was a good start and with full courage I entered the next game against Hayley Slocombe in the afternoon. I won this match 6-2, 6-0. On Friday it was time for my last poule match against Jade Lanai (the number 1 in the world). I didn’t know what to expect since I hadn’t played against Jade before. Yet I also won this game with the score; 6-0, 6-1. With this final result, I ended up standing in first place in the poule, which meant I got to play in the finals that Sunday against the number two of the poule (Jinte Bos).
That Saturday, we played the doubles, since we were only with four girls, we ended up right in the final and Jinte Bos and I convincingly won against Hayley Slocombe and Jade Lanai with the final score; 6-0, 6-1. This final score meant that we won the first world title in the doubles juniors girls! That evening we had a party evening with all the players, coaches and organization of the tournament.
Sunday morning was the day, the finals for the junior girls world title single. I played this match against Jinte and it was incredibly exciting. I knew in advance that it was not going to be easy since we are on the same level. I won the first set 6-2, after which Jinte came back 4-6 in the second set, so it came back to the third set. And what an exciting set from a 1-4 backlog I managed to work myself back in the match and I eventually won 6-4. The unthinkable still happened and I was allowed to also take home the world title in singles.
Monday afternoon we flew back to the Netherlands and at a quarter to seven we arrived at Schiphol, I had thought that there would be some people, but I had not thought so many would come! It was a nice welcome with all the balloons and lovely people!!
Unbelievable and also unreal but very cool that I have experienced this, this was an experience I will never forget!
Click here for the photos