Interview: Anna Sharkey, Olympic hopeful from Holtspur

FOR THOSE of you who've never heard of goalball, which has been a Paralympic sport since 1976, let me explain.
Think of a cross between basketball and football on a volley ball sized court with goals. Three partially sighted players per team are masked so that they can see nothing. The ball, which contains a bell, is hurled close to the ground as in bowling and the players, who are mostly moving in a crouching position, hurl themselves around after it.
This is the game that partially sighted Anna Sharkey, a former pupil of Beaconsfield High School, discovered and fell in love with at the age of 13.
She had gone to a Have A Go day organised by Bucks Association for the Blind and was asked if she'd like to take part in a goalball tournament.
She impressed the coaches, was asked to try out for the GB juniors squad and within three years was playing for them in America.
Things really took off when she turned 18 and was recruited onto the GB senior women's squad which this summer won the European Championships.

Talking to me in her parents' home at Cherry Tree Road, Holtspur, Anna said: "Winning the European Championships was beyond all expectations. I was hoping we'd get through to the semis. I don't think I've ever screamed so much in my life. It was the feeling that this really is the start of our journey towards the 2012 Paralympics."
The win was all the sweeter because until recently goalball in GB has taken a back seat compared to other nations. The lack of funding means that GB has no professional players, unlike other countries. There was no GB goalball team at the Beijing Paralympics.

Anna was born partially sighted; a result, she says of bad genes. She can read books and newspapers using a magnifying aid, and she can use a laptop using a large white-on-black font. At school her tunnel vision prevented her from becoming good at conventional team sports. She attended a boarding school for teenagers with disabilities to take her A levels - which is where she met her boyfriend Francis Tipton whom she will marry in 2011.
As well as intensive trainings; three times a week in the gym, fortnightly training games in London, monthly training with her team, Leicester, and matches all around the country, she is studying physiotherapy at the University of Birmingham.

At the moment she's not sure how she'll fit working as a physio alongside her training schedule. Studying and training is already proving extremely demanding and she's had to extend her degree by a year.
But if anything has to give, it won't be her route to the Paralympics, which she sees as a gift from God. (She attends St Thomas' Church in Holtspur.)
She said: "It's a passion. I'm visually impaired but the rest of my body works like everybody else's.
"Sometimes having a disability people can feel like the world has dealt them a blow, and there is anger, there's underlying tension, but I believe that God has given me a talent to play.
"It's great to be part of a team that's so supportive of each other and to know each other's frustrations and yet to come through at a high level.
"There's a lot of sacrifice. I've missed birthdays and weddings and family holidays because of the training, and it's a difficult to decision to make each time.
"There are times when you've got a cold and you don't feel like training. But the feeling we had after winning the European Championships, that's when you know it's all worthwhile."
The GB squad's next milestone en route to 2012 is the World championships in Sheffield in June next year. Anna said: "If we come away from that with a medal, that will be a really good sign. I think we can do it."

This article will appear with photographs in Thursday's Advertiser.