I left athletics behind and played basketball on and off throughout my teens until my twenties when I picked it up again with more committment, entering Irish League again and then playing for Dublin Celts – a really successful team making it to Division 1 in the GBWBA (UK) Basketball League.

During this time I had always under-achieved. All the confidence I had as a kid seemed to have disappeared and although I had flashes of talent, I could never seem to be consistent. All the way through basketball I felt like a spectator, never able to get into the game. I left the Celts after sitting on the fence during a lot of turbulence and finally took up an offer from a friend who had been asking me for ages to come try wheelchair tennis.

Two weeks later after my first tennis session in Carrickmines CLTC thanks to Pat Crowe, I was playing in my first Irish Wheelchair Tennis Open. I think I lost my first match badly in the lowest division but I was completely hooked. I’ve never experienced that satisfaction I felt when hitting a ball really well and making it do what I wanted.

After that first Irish Open I was invited to take part in the Belfast Open a month later. This was a whole new world to me. I had never thought about traveling to tournaments… this was even better!

Following both tournaments I went back and trained with Carrickmines during the summer months determined to get better. A little while later I also joined Westwood Clontarf where my passion for tennis increased tenfold when I met Justin Clarke, an Australian coach who was and is a huge influence on my tennis career and now a great friend. 

He was my first proper coach and was the one meeting me in the mornings at 6am to train before work. He pestered me get him a tennis chair so he could play me on equal terms and it’s thanks to him I have improved so much.

A few years later formed my own club, Advantage Wheelchair Tennis in DCU. I figured the only way things could develop was with more people playing.

Eventually I progressed to playing top level in both the Irish Open & Belfast Open tournaments. These were non-ranking tournaments held in August & September every year so it didn’t really give me a lot of match-play experience which of course is the most important thing in any sport. 

I very lucky in that I have a high level of technique, talent and speed, but I was low on experience which is the knowledge to know what to do with these tools. This has led me to be overlooked when the basics were being taught. I looked like a better player than I was (tactically) when in fact I had no idea what I was doing.

I have always dreamed of playing on tour and representing Ireland at Paralympic level but at that it this seemed like too big a challenge and I kept putting it off and coming up with reasons not to do it. Fear of failure, fear of success, funding, expectations, I’m not sure which.

However, in 2012 fate stepped in and I got the fantastic opportunity to volunteer with Paralympics Ireland as Online Communications Manager for the London 2012 Games. I had been at my first ITF that February in Preston and now I was going to get a taster of what Paralympics was really like. *