Doğramaci, Esra

BORN JUNE 8TH, 1979 in Sydney Australia, she played ice hockey with her sister Sera in boys leagues around Sydney then the Blacktown City Flyers Women's team. In 1996 at 17, she won the McKowen Trophy representing NSW and a spot on the 2nd All Star Line with Candice Mitchell, Melanie Singh, Amanda Fenton, Kylie Pedler and Rebecca Jalleh. The same year, still only 18, she played exhibition games against the visiting Assabet Valley team from the USA, in the squad now considered the first Australian National Women's Team.

In 1998, Doğramaci was a McKowen National Champion representing NSW in Perth coached by David Mann. But she had long left for Canada by then, even though there was no shortage of people who said "it was the dumbest thing to do". One of her coaches said she could no longer play with boys, in the years when there was no alternative here for female players.

The first Australian and the first International to play hockey at Calgary Oval, she trained 5 hours a day, 6 days a week, 11 months of the year. Shannon Miller, coach of the Minnesota-Duluth Bulldogs women and the Canadian women's national team, left a life-long impact on her. She was her first coach there. "I did this knowing that in my lifetime that as an Australian-Turkish woman, that Australia would never make the Olympics in women's hockey, there's just too many teams and you need to qualify. And also that there was no professional women's hockey at the time... I did this because it was the thing I loved most and I didn't want to spend my time doing anything else, and I also think that life is very short so you have to go after the things you are passionate about.

"I was scared, I was the Australian, I was the newcomer, and all these other girls had so much more experience than me, but you always have a decision. You can either hesitate, or you can face your fears and live your dreams, because in the shortness of life we have, you have to be brave enough". Her roommate there was a national team gold medallist who featured on the Weeties box at every breakfast, and most of the girls she played with were Canada National Team players. "When you're surrounded by excellence like that, you learn to excel".

She was a full-time athlete at the Olympic Oval Women's High Performance ice hockey program in Calgary from 1995 until 1999, in the company of many of Canada's olympians and national team players, some of whom are either still playing or are world-class coaches. In 2004, she toured Turkey where she met her great-uncle (who built a hospital and the first private university). When she moved there, few girls played ice hockey, but there were five women's teams and a national team by the time she left six years later. "I like to think I had something to do with that".

She completed a BS in Political Science from the University of Wisconsis-Superior (1999-02), a MS in International Affairs and Public Policy (2005-07) from Bikent University Ankara, Turkey, and MS in Politics and Communication from the London School of Economics as a Chevening scholar (2010-13). In between, she played hockey wherever she went, even in places like Doha, Qatar (2013). She has been a new media analyst working in communications at UNICEF Turkey, and UN Headquarters, Al Jazeera in Qatar and Turkey, and a Digital Consultant at BBC. She led the BBC World Services YouTube team across 20 languages, work that produced record-breaking growth and a nomination for best digital team at the British Media Awards in 2016.

Today she lives in Berlin, a senior editor for digital at Germany's public international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle. We have been discussing a young woman who speaks six languages, appears on radio, TV and online, usually talking about all of this. Doğramaci began her life-long track record of striding towards what she wants at the precise moment Australian ice hockey could no longer take her there.