Daisy Bruce

Sports Award

Age:

19

Biography

Hello, I'm Daisy, I have just completed my A levels and I play dodgeball for England, Leicester and the East Anglian Valkyries. Dodgeball is my passion and has been since I was 12 after my brothers mentioned a ftee girls session and I tried out which resulted in the Leicester white tigers being formed which was the first junior all girls team in the UK.

I am constantly pushing myself to better my play style and with this mindset I was selected for England at 14 however my training was interrupted by COVID and consequently moved online. I have continued to be selected each season since the lockdown and hope to progress into playing for my country at the European and World championships as well as be selected for Great Britain.

I would love for dodgeball to be a world renowned sport and enter into the Olympics to be more main-stage than how the sport currently is which is only streamed on YouTube but I wish for this to progress to the sports channels soon due to many of our English national league clips going viral on pages such as ESPN and Sport Bible. I'd like to see the progression of dodgeball go further than it already has from watching only one women's league be available due to a lack of teams to two full leagues at the end of last season hopefully moving to 3 for the next and seeing the junior players progress from the junior leagues up to the adults seeing the new and old generation of dodgeballers being combined.

The JHMT award is helping me develop myself as a player and therefore pushing me to higher goals for succession and in which I believe that every athlete/sportsperson should have a support system in place to support not only their mental health but their motivation and drive to the sport in which they play as the support system plays a large role in the success that athletes achieve such as family pushing for more training or advice from coaches friends other athletes on how to better the play. I truly believe that having a great support system is one of the main reasons I continue to push myself within dodgeball and strive to be better due to my family, athlete schemes and coaches always bettering me and moulding me into the player they and I want me to become.