With 32 years of age, Nadine Ernsting-Krienke has gone beyond 340 caps and hundreds of goals scored. She has been with the German team since 1991, more than a decade and a half of representing her country.

At the moment, this makes her the “last one still hanging in there”, she says, as former teammates have ended their national team careers or taken time off for study or work. Most of the German players in this tournament are from the squad who contested the junior World Cup in 2005.

Getting ready for the Champions Trophy was not one of our “high points, we had close to no preparation” she says, as the German squad only had one brief training camp in South Africa.

Nevertheless, the German team obviously wants to qualify for Beijing, so a lot of hard work will be necessary until the European Nations Cup in August 2007, their first opportunity to qualify for the next Olympic Games.

Nadine works for Volkswagen and has a boyfriend too, so she says “my days can be very long sometimes: working, training, and making time for my boyfriend”. She does all these things and a lot more, with her boyfriend and her boss supporting her with much understanding and patience for the energy that she is putting into all her responsibilities and the difficulty this may constitute sometimes.

Nadine is not planning to retire soon, but when doing so she wants to “play tennis and teach the little ones hockey” she comments. But before that, we are sure to see a few more goals from Nadine Ernsting-Krienke.