This is me: Alina Grijseels

THIS IS ME: Alina Grijseels

I basically grew up in the handball hall. It was my happy place and has been since. A secure place even in the most difficult times. The best year of my life in the handball hall was also one of the worst outside of it, as I lost someone I loved, way too soon and unexpectedly. During that time, the handball hall — being on the court — was a haven.

I started at five or six. My mother also played handball, on an amateur level, and I was in the hall all the time. I also did some athletics, and some gymnastics, but I always wanted to do something with the ball. There are a lot of pictures of me as a small kid with a ball in my hand or at my feet. That was what made me really happy.

I grew up around a small club, TV Aldenrade 07, with a great handball community. Every weekend I was in the hall and would spend the whole day there, watching other teams and playing myself. In Germany, all the teams from the club often play at home on the same day, starting on Saturday morning with the small kids, and then it goes up — the 10-year-old kids, the-12-year-old kids, and in the end, there are the woman’s and the men’s teams. So this was my day: Playing myself and then watching the other teams and also sticking together with my friends of course. I had a lot of friends in this club, so I really enjoyed having the complete day with them.

The club felt like family, because everyone knew each other. You saw the same people every second weekend when there were home games. I felt secure there and my parents did as well — sometimes on these home weekend days they would leave for a bit and come back later, knowing I’m there and I’m happy.

We are a sports family. My dad is Dutch and came to Germany because of rollhockey, playing at a club in my hometown. He was in the Netherlands national team. It’s not a really popular sport — it’s small. This was maybe the other sport in my life, but I was doing it for fun, just playing around at half-time or after the games. Handball was more interesting for me.

My father had seven siblings, so there’s a lot of family in the Netherlands. As a child, there were some weekends, Christmas and things like that where we would go to the Netherlands. Now it’s a little bit more difficult because we don’t have so much time to travel to visit everyone, but with social media, it’s a lot easier to have contact. I understand a lot of Dutch, but I cannot speak it so much. I speak German or English with the Dutch family.

It was really late that I knew I wanted to be serious about handball. As a teenager, I also played a lot of football. Then it was a decision I had to make, if I wanted to play football or handball. In the end, I felt like I was good at handball and I wanted to see how far I could go, but my love for football is still there and I really like playing it.

It was when I went to Dortmund at 18 that I realised, now I’m going to the second league and maybe I’m better than I thought. I never thought I wanted to be a professional or had that as my biggest goal in life. It was more like I had a lot of fun. Of course, you can feel you are good at it or are maybe better than some other girls, but I never thought I was the best of the team. With the decision to go to Dortmund, in the second league, I would earn money and thought maybe I could play handball, study and see how it goes. I felt like it was good for me that it was more like I have fun and this is the sport I love, the sport I want to do, and then we will see how the future will be.

When Dortmund called me, it was a little bit of a surprise because I was really young. I had played with the junior national team, but it was not in my mind that a second or first league club would be interested in me. I was not in the youth national teams from the beginning. We had a squad in Germany, where the talented players were chosen by the trainer. I was in this big pool, but not in the 16 that were going to the first championship, so I knew I had to work more. Of course, I had this goal, and then in 2014, I played my first youth championship.

That was the same year Dortmund called me. They said they had a lot of problems with injuries. “We saw you during the youth championship and we thought it could be a good opportunity.”

In the first year we made it into the first league. That was really crazy, especially after the decision to go as a kind of try and see, but it was really good for me because I was in the team already. I had one year in the second league and I knew the club. I was integrated in the team. And then we were in the first league, where I got more experience, more playing time in the first league. It was, for me, the perfect choice in the end because as a young player you need a lot of playing time.

After we went to the first league, people like Clara Woltering and Anne Müller came into the team. Such experienced and really good players. So now suddenly I was playing with national team players, which seems so far away when you’re young. You know them from television or from the big games and then you are in one team. So that was really nice for me, but I didn’t expect this before. It was going so fast on this level.

Up to this point, people would tell me they thought I was talented, but I was not sure exactly how good I am or how good I could be. It was still a kind of dream living and don’t think too much about what is possible but more like, do what you love and things will work out well.

In the end it was a very long and important relationship with Dortmund. I played nine seasons there. The club did a lot for me. I went with them because it’s a complete club, and I knew there were a lot of possibilities. That was perfect at my age and in my development because the club stepped up and I also stepped up. I would say we grew up together.

I became German champion with Dortmund, and it means a lot to me because it felt like family. I knew everyone. I lived there for 10 years. It was an amazing time, a great time, and I’m really, really thankful for everything I could do in the time with them and what I achieved.

But not everything is easy. During this time, my boyfriend died of cancer. That was in 2021, so now three years ago. We were together two and a half years. This was really the hardest time in my life. It was a hard time while he was doing the chemotherapy and all the things you have to do, and of course, in the end, to feel like the person is away and never coming back.

On the sports level, everything was on the perfect course. I went up into the national team and had my first experience there. Everything was feeling really good and then my boyfriend had this diagnosis in the summer of 2020. It was one really hard year and all in the Covid period. In the end, the cancer was too strong.

He died in April and in May we become German champions, so it was a kind of the saddest moment in life together with the happiest moment on the sports level. My boyfriend was working for the club, in the handball part, also building the team up. It was a big dream for him that we would be German champions. We achieved it, but he was not there anymore, so it was a little bit 50:50 — you’re happy for him because you know it was his dream and we made it, but also sad because he cannot celebrate with everyone.

I had really, really hard years after this of course. I'm really thankful Dortmund, as a club, were there. They protected me a lot and gave me support, so I could process it and have the mindset to go further, to do more and come back in my life. On the private side, of course there was my family and really I had the best support from them I could wish for. I know that I can rely on my family and that is the most important thing in life for me.

In the first year after I was really good in the handball part because it was the only thing where I didn’t have to think about my private life. It’s like people going to work and work and work through something like this. That was me with handball — go to training, go to the games. We played the Champions League also that year and it was a really good season for me. Everyone said, how is this possible? Sometimes it’s like this. Sometimes you want to be happy in this part and it’s strange, but I also feel like the very difficult experience helped me to grow up and be better in the handball part of my life.

It gives perspective. A lost match doesn’t matter as much, of course, once you’ve experienced something like that. You feel like there’s something more important in your life than handball. This maybe also helped in my mindset, to enjoy handball more. I would think about why I started with this and tell myself to enjoy this time in my life because it also has an end and it’s a short time that you can be a professional handball player. Enjoy it more and don’t think winning every game is the most important thing in the world. 

After that season, 2021/22, I thought about whether I wanted to go to another club or not. I had opportunities to go earlier to a new club and it was also maybe a decision to stay home to be clear about everything, to understand what had happened in my private life and to be strong enough to go outside of Germany. Then that summer I thought it was time. I wanted to challenge myself again and to go outside of Germany. I chose Metz for my sports development, but also for me personally. It was a really good choice to do it.

In the beginning, it was not easy for me, because it was the first time out of Germany. It’s a new language, a new culture, a new club. I also feel like this personal part, that my partner had died, came back a little bit because I was dealing with all these new things without his support. I had some strategies in Dortmund to feel good, to handle it, and when I came here, it was difficult because the strategies were not possible anymore. I had to search for some new ways to feel good and to feel comfortable and secure, and to perform on the sports level of course.

One strategy, for example, is that I would go to the cemetery when I didn’t feel so good, to talk to him, calm down, think about things and settle myself. It could be not feeling good related to him or something totally unrelated — something I would have talked to him about. There are off days, where I don’t feel good because of him or because it’s the date we got together or other dates… Christmas is special, or his birthday. On these kinds of days, if it was possible, I would go to the cemetery. But also when I felt angry about something or angry with myself because I didn’t play so good or not as good as I expected. It was something like my secure place. Maybe not only because of his death, but also for me to think while feeling close to him, like, what would he say now? He’d say: “Calm down. You’re overreacting — it was only one game. Maybe try something else.”

When I moved to Metz, I had to find a good place for me to do that. One that is not so connected to him, but more for me, for myself, to find a new way to go forward. 

I also needed to find some people who I can talk to because I left behind my friends, my family, and the people from the club, who feel like friends because I’ve known them so long. They’ve known me since I was 18 years old. The environment changed so I had to figure out who I can trust with these personal things and speak to when I have problems, or sometimes only to share my thoughts. Sometimes it helps simply to say something out loud so that you are not in your own bubble all the time.

I think I used the time really good, to figure out what I need to perform on the highest level and also outside. It was the right decision and I’m also thankful to play in a top international club.

Now I go my way and when I come back to Dortmund it’s maybe not so connected to my boyfriend. In some ways it will be forever connected to him, but I can also see the club as a different kind of thing — what it was in my journey, for my development. So for myself and my own journey, I think it was important to go somewhere else.

Looking to the future, aside from the tasks with Metz, a big step will be the Olympic qualification with Germany in April. This is in the minds of all of us in the national team all the time because it's the biggest dream as a player. Also for women’s handball in Germany, it would be a big sign to go to the Olympics and get attention in the country. During the Olympics, all the sports are shown on the TV. Everyone can see you and everyone knows the team is in the Olympic Games.

When you see the European Championship for the men in January, it was an amazing tournament and I feel like also the Germans find it quite interesting — they are interested in the other teams, so the arenas where Germany weren’t playing were full. German people are quite interested in sports in general. They want to go to the games of, say, Denmark or the Netherlands.

During the EURO, LANXESS arena was really full and there was an amazing atmosphere. Also like the Champions League, the EHF FINAL4, every year is completely full and there are a lot of Germans. For men’s handball, they usually show the games on TV, but for us, it’s not that normal.

This can be a bit annoying, because we are doing the same sports, doing the same work, and it seems it’s not so important as the men’s side. But of course, if we would win a medal or something, the pressure would be higher — they would have to show us because we’re one of the best teams in the world. So it’s a little bit like something in between — we have to perform to get the pressure high and they have to show more. The Olympic qualification, for example, is on the TV, so for us it’s a big chance to show how we can play and it’s also a possibility to have big attention.

We will try to use the opportunity to change how it is. For these Olympic games and the Olympic tournament, it’s really important to go the next step on this level.

We have a good team — a really good team with good players and we have developed in the last years. We want to go this next step, to maybe get a medal, to go to the semi-final. In the last years, we have been close. Sometimes we lost with one goal and then we would not be in the semi-final or sometimes we played a good tournament but had one bad game when it’s important. Like this last World Championship, we played really good and then against Sweden in the quarter-final, we made our worst game in the whole tournament. It’s bad timing when you make the worst game in the quarter-final.

But we feel like our development is good and we are still a young team. I think the strongest years for us are coming now. We hope that we can make it at one point, but on the other side, when you see Norway, Denmark or France, you have to say they have stronger teams than us, considering all 16 players. Maybe they’re better than us in this but we are not so far away — or it feels like we are not so far away to make it at one time. So, we work on it.

It’s also important that now a lot of players are going to the top clubs — Emily Bölk at FTC, Xenia Smits at Bietigheim, or Katharina Filter now at Brest. That means we also have these kinds of high-pressure games on the club level, to have more experience in this. Then in those kinds of games, you learn that a bad 10 minutes to start — like we had against Sweden in the World Championship quarter-final — doesn’t mean you have no chance, but you just need to pull yourselves up. The game is 60 minutes, so you can have 10 bad minutes and still win.

There’s a lot of experience to be gained and it’s important to have these experiences. We speak a lot about what happens before games where we have trouble also — what was maybe a bit different in the preparation or in our individual mindsets or in the team’s mindset. This experience can only help us to be more prepared in other difficult and important matches.

After the last few years, learning from difficult experiences is definitely something I know a thing or two about. There will always be highs and lows. Losing someone you love and finding the way to take care of yourself through that. Difficult defeats and great wins. That’s sport, that’s life, and this is me.

Alina Grijseels
March 2024