My sports career

In December of 2001, I started playing Para-Icehockey as a twelve year old. Some weeks later, I played my very first game. It was a German league game against Bremen. I was the youngest player, who ever played in a league game and scored an assist. Normally, it as not allowed to play in the league before beeing sixteen years old.

 

With fourteen, I got the invitation to a try out for the German national team. I got selected for the team and played my first game shortly after my 15th birthday. It was during the Radisson Cup in Cologne (4 nations cup with Canada, the USA and Norway).

 

In 2005, we got the first European champions of our sport and put our names into the history books. We also qualified for the Paraympics 2006 in Torino.

 

During that paralympic games, we went out of the group stage with the first place and were able to win against the defending champions from Salt Lake City, the United States of America.

In the seminfal, we played against Canada. We story of this game is very short: we lost against the best team of the tournament with 0:5. In the bronze medal game, we had to play against the US team again. It was a very physical and fast paced game, which we lost with 3:4. So we just reached the fourth place.  

 

In the Junior World Cup in 2007, I was selected to be the team captain. We won the bronze medal this time and I was the best goal scorer of the tournament, with 9 goals in 4 games. At the same year, we won another bronze medal. This time, it was in the European championships.

 

2008, we reached the 5th rank in the A-Pool World championship in Boston. The tragedy of that year was, that my dad lost his life in an accident with his motorbike. So the year 2008 is a year, which I would like to cut out of my life.

 

One year later, we reached the 8th rank in the A-Pool and went down to the B-Pool. Six months later, we missed the qualification for the paralympic games in Vancouver. We lost the most important game against Sweden. We were in the lead with 2:1. One second before the end of the regular time, Sweden scored the tying goal. And in Overtime, they were able to score the game winner. So we had to watch the Vancouver games at home...

 

2011, I got selected to be the team captain of the national team. My first tournament as team captain were the B-Pool championship in Serbia. We reached the third rank and missed to get up to the A-Pool again.

 

Six months after that, we got another chance. We played the B-Pool championships in Japan and beat the japanese team in that final with 3:2. I scored two goals in that important game and helped my team, to get back to the A-Pool.

 

In the qualification tournament for Sochi 2014, we missed the paralympic games again. And like four years before, we lost the important game against Sweden...

 

2015, we played in the A-Pool World championships and were able to stay in it. We won the deciding game against Czech Republic with 1:0.

 

After that tournament, I left the national team because of personal reasons.

 

In 2015, 2016 and 2017, we were able to win the German championship with my club team, the Weser Stars Bremen.