Always striving for perfection, Pien Dicke is never satisfied. But life’s harsh lessons have also taught her to put things into perspective over the past year, at a time when she’s had to seriously consider that she might never play hockey again.

“What is my life anyway?” the SCHC attacker asked himself aloud.

The 23-year-old fat man is fortunate to have hope that she will come back even stronger. As so often in her career, when she was told by the doctor as a child that one should rather lose sight of top-class sport because of juvenile rheumatism.

She even played a farewell game. But because the pain didn’t go away afterwards, she went back to ice hockey.

Anyone who knows Dicke a little knows that she cannot sit still. When a chronic foot injury kept her away from hockey a year ago, she found distraction in two college studies.

“Actually, they didn’t really know what was going on and how to proceed,” she says of the pain she had been suffering all along. “I just kept playing ice hockey because it was possible back then.”

Dicke played and won the European Championship with the Netherlands in 2021, which cost her dearly afterwards. Her injury worsened. And because she couldn’t show her top form, she was also eliminated from the selection for the Olympics.

“I didn’t see the Olympics,” says Dicke. “It was really too painful.”

Orange won gold without thickness. And then the competition in the Netherlands started without her input. She had her left leg in a cast for eight weeks; she had hardly ever felt more alone. Although she remained close to her team, she no longer felt fully part of it.

“Afterward it turned out that my foot had broken a lot, and then I had to rehabilitate myself for a long time,” Dicke says, looking back. “The doctor then also said: Dude, Pien, I don’t know if it’s really going to be the case that you’re still playing at the level you used to play at. This month has been really terrible for me.”

Back after fourteen months

Rehabilitation was difficult and her planned return was significantly delayed by a second operation. In July she finally returned to the training ground and played another official match fourteen months after the European Championship final with the SCHC.

She has her life back. And she can enjoy the sport again as she has made great strides in her comeback in recent months.

Like her teammates Yibbi Jansen and Ginella Zerbo, she has already scored eight goals this season and is part of the trio hoping to break Den Bosch’s dominance this season. “I just like it,” she laughs when the unprecedented productivity is mentioned.

Along with Yibbi Jansen and Ginella Zerbo, Pien Dicke is one of the eye-catchers at SCHC:

And of course it is an additional incentive that national coach Paul van Ass has already included her in the Orange training group. That way, she can raise the bar yet again, but this time certainly not without enjoying the moment. “That moment of: You’re back.”

She wouldn’t be fat herself if she were content with that alone.

“I don’t think I’m still where I could be,” it sounds combative. “And at the same time, I also know that it’s not realistic and has to come in small steps. But I’m definitely on my way back.”