Wijk: The Playmaker

We all have seen it. Sweden’s Anna Wijk in a perfect scoring position with the ball on her stick, the goalie and defenders moving in panic to block her shot. With her head up and cool eyes scanning, Anna Wijk’s hands send the ball to a teammate unseen by anyone else, to place into open net. That’s how the world’s best floorball center operates. Becoming what she is has taken exceptional talent, hard work and also personal sacrifices.

Sweden’s fifth consecutive WFC gold in December in Tampere did not come as unopposed as the previous ones but one thing was clear: Anna Wijk was the number one player of another grand tournament. The WFC week was crowned with her receiving the prize for the tournaments’s best player.

With her three goals and six assists in the group phase and three goals and nine assists in the play offs, Anna Wijk not only showed her level but also her playing style. Setting up scoring opportunities for her line-mates is her top priority. Yet, Anna Wijk has said she likes to listen to being complimented but finds it hard to join in herself. No wonder she is quick to bring up the national team as a whole.

”We have an assortment of fantastically skillful players and out national team coaches do a superb job finding them appropriate roles in the team. I think the Swedish team is becoming stronger year after year but so are our competitors. I was especially impressed by the Finnish team in the WFC. They have made progress both technically and tactically and have a lot of high-class players.”

_{Wijk´s WFC debut in 2009, with Lindström and Dahlerus in the same line. (Photo Erwin Keller)}

Unique talent
Anna Wijk played her first women’s WFC in Västerås in 2009 and was immediately noted by experts for her maturity. The 18-year old rookie was boldly set to center stars Emelie Lindström and Hermine Dahlerus and took the challenge calmly. She had a goal and seven assists in the tournament and set up Lindström’s winning goal in the final against Switzerland. With her skill, success, fluent performances in front of the media and Swedish-blonde good looks, Wijk has become one of the regular PR faces of Swedish floorball and equipment manufacturer Unihoc.

Anna Wijk’s road to floorball success is one typical to a country with love and tradition of ball sports and a system to develop sports talent. Being a country where women’s sports has above average global recognition, may also have to do with it. ”I come from a real sports family and always looked up to my older brother who played ice hockey, bandy and football. I was always hanging out with him and his friends playing ball out in the street and I actually started playing floorball at the age of five,” Anna Wijk looks back.

Crazy for playing the ball, she also took on bandy, ice hockey and football but floorball turned out to be the most fun of them all. Back home in Sandviken there was no girls’ floorball team which meant that young Anna had to join a boys’ team for the next years which was no problem. All the endless hours of fighting for the ball against boys would prove to be an asset in Anna Wijk’s becoming world’s number one female player. Besides her older brother, Anna Wijk had a floorball player to look up to as an idol. That was the center Karolina Widar who she would later play with in the national team.

_{Wijk won the European Cup 2009 with the team of IKSU.
(Photo Erwin Keller)}

The highway of tears
It was at the age of 15 years that Anna Wijk found her standing at the crossroad. Her determination for developing herself as an athlete lead to her choosing to move to Riksidrottsgymnasium (RIG) up north in Umeå almost 500 road kilometers away from home instead of staying back and carrying on at a local school.

The time in Umeå would lead to many emotional phone calls back home and the E4 highway between the towns to be known to the family as ”the highway of tears”. But life away filled with floorball would develop Anna Wijk as a player and even more as a person. The time in RIG would mean endless hours of chances to practice floorball on afternoons and evenings among others, who shared the same passion for the game. Being registered a player of the RIG Umeå IBF Division 1 team for official games, the young talent was already in her second school year noticed and called to join local club of IKSU in the Swedish women’s league.

Everything was now happening at top speed. The 17-year old played for RIG in the daytime and IKSU in the evenings, won her first Champions Cup title with IKSU and was called to the women’s national team for the 2009 WFC in Västerås. Anna Wijk has said she had a great time with IKSU but being a family person she chose to move closer to home after graduation in 2010 and joined KAIS Mora. The seasons after that have seen a world class center maturing into an even better player. And yet Anna Wijk is still merely 24 years old!

_{Anna Wijk was ellected MVP of WFC 2015. (Photo Erwin Keller)}

No money to be a Pro
It is obvious Anna Wijk has an exceptional talent but she would have never become a world star without exceptional training will. ”It is talent blended with hard training. I love to train,” Anna Wijk stresses.

”Playing in the Svenska Superligan takes more time than most people would realize. We practice four times a week as a team topped with one or two games. Besides studying, I invest a lot of time in individual training. I work out practically every afternoon as in condition training or going to the gym. Besides all the floorball, I study to become a teacher and combining it with floorball is quite easy as I study from home.”

Not even a Swedish female floorball star has yet been offered a chance to play professionally. ”Being able to play floorball full-time would of course be a dream situation but unfortunately the money is just not there.” Sweden is one of the world’s most equal for women’s sports countries but still far from perfect. ”Women’s sports have been getting more and more attention and recognition which is nice but we still have to work on equality,” Anna Wijk has noticed.

All the work that Anna Wijk lays in floorball is crowned with her character as player. As the best players are she, too, has a ”vinnarskalle”, the Swedish word for a player who is at her best when tight games are decided. ”For me it is probably something I was born with. I have always been a winner type who hates losing.”

_{Anna Wijk celebrating a Swedish title with KAIS Mora. (Photo Per Wiklund)}

Swedish title nr.2?
A list of Anna Wijk’s career successes reflect the dilemma of a Swedish top player: For many stars, it’s easier to become World champion than Swedish champion.

With this being written, Anna Wijk and her KAIS Mora IF are preparing for the Swedish Superfinale against Pixbo but at least until then she only has won the national title once. That was in 2015 as Wijk finally got to lift the trophy as the captain of KAIS Mora. For her, the fulfillment had been preceded by no less than three lost final games, one with IKSU and two with KAIS Mora.

This far, the season has been another success story for the face of Swedish floorball. Anna Wijk was the top scorer of the regular season with jaw-dropping 84 points and only four penalty minutes in 26 games. Having placed third, KAIS Mora were considered underdogs to Pixbo and IKSU but they topped their quarter-final success against Täby with eliminating IKSU in the semis with 3-1 in matches.