After ballet came badminton, swimming, synchronised swimming, diving and gymnastics I used to go over to England to compete for Jersey in all of these sports except for diving. I did quite well in most of my sports at a junior level winning various medals in each but my true passion always lay with badminton. I knew this if anything by the act that I was always so upset if I lost a badminton match whereas with my other sportsI would be disappointed but would soon shrug it off.

I first got into badminton because my parents and brother played at the time. My parents played at club level and my brother turned out to be one of the best players on the island and had far more natural skill than I ever did. Grrr!!! So I started off just playing with my mum or dad either before, after of in between their games or sometimes we would book a court and go for a hit. My first badminton club was called St. Marks which I joined when I was about 6yrs old.

When I was 10yrs my doubles partner Danielle Le Feuvre and I were top in the island in our age group in doubles and number 1 and 2 for singles (her 1 me 2). Because we were winning everything in jersey in the under 12s my mum took us over to England to play an under 11 open tournament when we were just 10yrs old. My mum seemed to think that it cant be that much different on the mainland, despite being told "its another world out there", and she was right. We won our doubles and I got to the semis of the singles in our first tournament. This was the start of it all really as from then on we started doing the circuit of junior tournaments in England and competed approximately once a month. We pretty much dominated the the doubles in our age group right the way through to the under 18s in doubles. However, singles was another story. I didn't win my first singes tournament in england until I was under 16. FINALLY!!! As time went by I slowly started to win more and more singles tournaments until my last year of juniors where I won all of them on the English circuit.

The first time I was selected to play for england juniors was in the under 14s in the Danish cup held in Copenhagen.

This was a team event and individual tournament. I remember waiting on tenterhooks for that selection letter to arrive in the post, despite winning all the tournaments on the circuit we still werent sure how these things worked and whether that guaranteed us a place on the team. However when the letter finally arrived I was so happy I couldn't believe I was actually going to be playing for England.

My first major senior international event was the Commonwealth games in Kuala Lumpar in 1998 when I was 19 years old and to this day it still stands out as one of the most memorable events I have ever competed in. I didn't get that far in the individual tournament but all in all I put in some good performances there. It was the first time I had competed in front of such big crowds and the atmosphere was electric. As well as that there was the opening ceremony which was huge, and also the fact that I was part of the same sporting event as a lot of other sports people I had seen on tv.