How I got
left of centre.

Before any of it.

At 18 months old, when this photo was taken, I was just learning to walk. Like any toddler. But unlike most toddlers, I was about to learn something far more important — how to adapt.

I was diagnosed with a spinal cord tumour. Cancer of the spinal cord. They removed it, but it left permanent damage to the nerves, muscles and tendons of my right leg, and the doctors told my parents it was unlikely I’d ever walk properly. Multiple surgeries followed. So did a list: the things I would never do. You can’t do this. You shouldn’t do that. Be careful. That’s pretty much what I heard for the next sixteen years.

They were limiting someone who had never learned to accept limits.

No sport. Not yet.

The playground is a lonely place when you’re the kid who moves differently. The one who can’t run in PE. The one who can’t keep up with the games. Kids don’t know how to take you, so they stare. I didn’t do any sport at school — I just wanted to be like everyone else.

As a teenager it got harder. I struggled with my mental health; some days I couldn’t look at myself. I didn’t want to be “brave” or “inspiring” — I wanted to be normal. The comments at school followed me home onto the answering machine. I begged my parents to let me drop out. They made me go every day, and I hated them for it.

I didn’t understand the lesson then. I do now.

Ten years a teacher.

I’ve been a primary school teacher for ten years. This year, for the first time, that includes PE — a strange full circle for the kid who couldn’t run in it.

Teaching is the foundation of how I coach: break the movement down, meet the person where they are, and hold the standard anyway.

Go pick up a bar.

Everything changed the day I walked into a CrossFit box in 2022. The coach told me to go and pick up a bar and do squats — the same thing he told everyone else in the class. It stopped me in my tracks. Not helped. Not pitied. Just accepted. For the first time, someone asked what I could do instead of assuming what I couldn’t.

My first squats and lunges weren’t pretty. But in that moment I wasn’t the kid with the spinal tumour any more. I was an athlete working on her lunges. Every adaptation became a puzzle to solve, and slowly the body I’d resented became my source of pride.

In December 2022 I went to DUC and saw adaptive athletes compete for the first time — in front of thousands, adapting every workout to their own bodies. I thought: how brave. Maybe one day. I went home and researched adaptive CrossFit, found a whole division I never knew existed, and started mirroring how those athletes trained.

Finding my division.

In January 2023 I signed up with a coach, who kept floating the idea of competing. I kept saying I wasn’t ready. At the very least, she said, come and meet everyone. So my first competition was the Oceania Throwdown — and it was so much more than a test of fitness. Surrounded by athletes who shared the same passion, I wasn’t the girl with “the leg”. They saw an athlete. A competitor. A member of the community.

I left a different person, and slowly that’s who I became. Adaptive CrossFit doesn’t scale the sport down — it rebuilds the standard around a different body. Finding the Lower Minor division meant a new rulebook, new movement standards, and, for the first time, competing against people whose bodies work the way mine does.

I registered for DUC, Australia’s national competition, and qualified. I wasn’t just competing any more. I was turning from someone who dreamed into someone who did.

National and international competitions.

Then came the CrossFit Games. It starts with the Open, where thousands compete hoping to be among the few. Making the Semifinals felt like validation. Texas — standing at world level in 2024 — was something else entirely.

The path there was brutal. Early mornings before work, late nights after long days teaching, weekends consumed by training, meal prep, eating when I wasn’t hungry. Frustrations, injuries, setbacks. There were moments my body screamed to stop. I kept going — not because it was easy, but because it was meaningful.

Since then: Torian Pro, the Oceania Championships, WheelWOD Adaptive Semifinals in 2023 and again in 2025. The setbacks are on the record too, because they’re part of the result.