Why football?
There are a few reasons.
Let's go back to the start. I’d always played loads of different sports growing up.
My mum was the reason why I started playing handball. That was her sport.
But during break times at school, I’d play football. I fell in love with it. So, I came home and told my mum: “I really want to do this”.
I found a boys team I could train with, my home town team called Blauw-Zwart, translated into English, it means Blue-Black, and I got my first pair of boots. Black Adidas Copa Mundials.
They were a player down, so I finished the season with them, training twice a week
and playing matches. Playing with them until the 2017.
That’s where my love for the game really started.
Whether I was playing with them or my first women’s team back home, playing college football in the USA, with Anderlecht in Belgium or Excelsior Rotterdam in the Netherlands, or now in Scotland, the love has never gone away.
There was always something more to football than the other sports I’d played.
Watching it. Playing it. It made me happy. It made me learn and grow, always pushing me on to be better.
All of that is something that still rings true to me today.
I love being competitive. Winning. Playing for something is what keeps me going. For me, that's the best part of our sport.
In all but one of my years in the States, I won a trophy. I became a league champion in Belgium, too. With Glasgow City, I’m at a club where winning is in its DNA.
There is something special about being a defender, too. I actually started out as a midfielder, but the older I got, the further back I moved.
Say I make a tackle, and it might have ended up being a goal otherwise? Winning those battles, it just helps to build your confidence.
And as defenders, we have to work together as a unit.
A striker might be in the right spot to finish off the move and score a goal, but as defenders, we must be moving and understanding in tandem with each other to be the most effective.
Football brings people together. Doing life alongside people who I thought I would never meet.
Looking at all the people I’ve met and the friends I’ve made, and the person I’ve grown to be... I am such a different person to the one who would have just stayed in the Netherlands.
But for all the people I’ve met, there has been one woman who has been with me every step of the way. My mum. From that first time I came home from school asking to play football to now, she’s been there.
She’s my number one fan, and I’m hers, too.
I love seeing all my teammates with their parents and families after our games. It makes me feel at home. And it’s extra special when my mum is in the crowd.
Football has given me friends for life. People who have become family.
It has given me so many new opportunities, from travelling the world, living in different countries and to learning new things about myself.
To the young Kim who was deciding what sport it might be, football is going to give you so much. Everything is possible if you keep working for it. You’ll never doubt you made the right choice.
You can join Kim, and the rest of the squad for the end of season run-in at The Peasy by getting tickets for our final two home games of the ScottishPower Women's Premier League season here.