Born in South Africa in 1984, where I lived for 10 years, did a lot of swimming and athletics competitively.  Moved to a little island in Malaysia called Penang, where I lived for 4 years, moved school 3 times so had a lot of access to different sports, as well as continuing the swimming and athletics, but volleyball stuck out for me.  When we moved to Edinburgh in 1998, I made my decision on which school I was going to choose based on whether they had a volleyball team or not.  Coincidently, Mary Erskine School in Edinburgh, claimed they had a volleyball club, but instead was just something they wrote in their prospectus, so I founded the volleyball club at the school.  Around the same time, I approached John Scobie at South Queensferry volleyball club about playing with them, and after some discussions I joined the team there.  I played for the club team for almost 7 years, in which we worked our way up through the divisions till we were in division 1, and in our final year as the original team who consisted of Jennifer Thom, Anne Morrish, Anneka Hastings, Joanne Morgan, Mel Coutts, Susan Reid and myself, we won the league, the cup, Perth and didn't drop a set the whole season!! This was a great accomplishment for us.  We also played a season in Europe competing against other Cup Winners, and although we didn't do very well it opened the teams eyes to all the possibilties outside of Scotland in terms of volleyball. 

While playing National League in Scotland, I was selected to play for the Senior Womens Indoor National team.  During the indoor off season, I played firstly just for fun and then because I really enjoyed and wanted to be part of it, I played beach volleyball, mostly down in England, until the Scottish tour was created.  At one of the tournaments down south, I was approached by two coaches who were based in Bath, trying to create a National Training Center for Beach Volleyball, and felt that it was time to move on.  At this point I had been in Edinburgh for 7 years, and had finished my masters degree of Management with Business Law so there was nothing concrete keeping me in Edinburgh.  I moved down to Bath to join the national set up for beach in September 2006.  That first off season was a huge shock to the system but i thrived on it.  My beach game was developing and there just seemed like a huge big new world out there to conquer, and thats what I'm currently still trying to do!!

Our first season on the FIVB World Tour consisted of 2 events, Norway and Finland and it was a good experience although we got smashed! It gave us specific things to work on and also taught us that unlike indoor volleyball, experience has a lot to do with beach volleyball.  Last season our coach decided to shake things up a little bit by switching  shook the two teams up after a not so successful season for Zara and I, and Lucy and Denise failing to qualify for the Beijing Olympics.  Denise and I had a few good results at the end of the season in 2008, which was nice as we were finally getting near to where we wanted to be all the time....the Main Draw!!

Going in to the pre-season of the 2009 season, we decided we wanted to switch the teams back and luckily the coaches allowed it.

We started the season ok, getting 17ths at the first two events in Brazil and China, which gave us enough points to qualify for the World Championships in Stavanger, Norway, which was one of the goals we set out in the pre-season.  We didn't do as well as we wanted or what was expected of us in Norway, but were thankful to have experienced it as it is the only event on the tour which is like the Olympic format: play one day, have a day off.  After the World Championships, was the 4 Grand Slams back to back, the tour went to Gstaad in Austria, Moscow, Marseille and Klagenfurt.  We got to the last round in the qualifier in most of them, but failed to get past the other team.  We qualified in Marseille though which was good, although very very windy!!!! The last third of the tour is the part we were aiming on for results, and we pulled one out in Kristiansand in Norway, beat the host nation team on center court to get into the Round 2 of the winners and then drew a Brazilian team who had come 4th the weekend before in Poland and beat them in 2 sets!! This took us to Round 3, with a guaranteed 9th! A top 10 result, which was a brilliant result for us!!  The next week in Finland we got a 17th..which was a little disappointing but still a win in the main draw so at least we're going in the right direction. 

My dream has always been to compete at the Olympics, whether it was for swimming when I was younger, or Beach Volleyball now. To play in Horse Guards Parade in London in 2012, is the dream, aspiration and goal.