By Isaac Nowroozi
23-year-old Paula van Dommelen had never played Canberra competition football before and was recovering from a heart condition. That still wasn’t enough to stop her from making the Woden-Weston FC Women’s Premier League side. What’s more incredible than that? It only took her 30 minutes.
Born in the Netherlands, van Dommelen has always had a passion for sport, but football was not on her radar. Van Dommelen started practicing Judo at age seven, where she became a high-level black belt and found tremendous success.
“I was training Judo a lot, I won a lot of competitions and became second in all of Europe” said van Dommelen. However, fourteen years later at age 21, an unfortunate heart condition would force van Dommelen to give that up.
“I was always competing at a high level, and because of that I was always under a lot of pressure, I wasn’t good with the amount of pressure I would get from everyone” she said. “I then started to develop a heart problem, for no reason my heart was beating at around 180 to 200 beats a minute, it was very scary for me.
“After a lot of research, it was best to maybe stop Judo for one year, but after one year off it is very hard to go back to your own level”.
Van Dommelen then decided to come to Australia and train to become a physiotherapist. As a way of making friends and meeting new people, she decided to try out of a football club, and Woden-Weston FC happened to be the most conveniently placed side to try out four.
“I started playing soccer as a way to be social, to meet new people, so I heard about the trials and thought maybe I could do it” she said. Little did she know, it would end up with her playing at the top level in another sport.
“Diego Elmoudawar, my coach, saw me play and asked me to play for his team within the first 30 minutes” she said. “It’s unbelievable, I didn’t know that they wanted to ask me to play at that level. But it’s good, I hope to give them the best out of me this season”.
Van Dommelen is used to high-level competition, and being successful in her chosen sports. It is no surprise that she is motivated to take her new-found love for football as far as she can. “I’m really motivated, I always practice by myself, I watch YouTube videos, because I want to be the best I can” she said.
“You never know how far you can go”.
Photo: supplied by Paula van Dommelen