Sara Keçeci (born 21 October 1994) is a Turkish-Danish female handballer playing in

goalkeeper In many team sports that involve scoring goal (sport), goals, the goalkeeper (sometimes termed goaltender, netminder, GK, goalie, or keeper) is a designated player charged with directly preventing the opposing team from scoring by blocking or i ...

position. She has

dual citizenship Multiple citizenship (or multiple nationality) is a person's legal status in which a person is at the same time recognized by more than one sovereign state, country under its nationality law, nationality and citizenship law as a national or cit ...

but plays internationally as a member of the Turkish national team.

Early years

Sara was born in

Sønderborg (; ) is a Denmark, Danish town in the Region of Southern Denmark. It is the main town and the administrative seat of Sønderborg Municipality (Kommune). The town has a population of 28,333 (1 January 2025),Diyarbakır Diyarbakır is the largest Kurdish-majority city in Turkey. It is the administrative center of Diyarbakır Province. Situated around a high plateau by the banks of the Tigris river on which stands the historic Diyarbakır Fortress, it is ...

in 1991, and a Danish mother. Her father works in a plant that manufactures agricultural machinery, and her mother is a primary school teacher. Her father is a former footballer and basketball player, and also serves as an official at a local sports club's football team. At age five, Sara Keçeci began playing football. When she grew up, her mother drew Sara's interest to handball because she did not want her daughter to play with boys anymore. At age ten, Sara switched mainly to handball, however continued to play football in her Hørup school team at the same time. Inspired while watching a handball match of the Turkey women's national team at a European championship in Denmark, her interest for handball was strengthened.

Sports career

Club

During her high school years, she played in the Hørup Central School's girls' handball team. Later, Keçeci was with the Danish Women's Handball League teams KIF Vejen in 2012–13 and Vejen EH in 2013–14. After her club went bankrupt, she signed in July 2014 for Silkeborg-Voel KFUM. She was appointed also goalkeeper coach of the youth teams of girls U-14, U-16 and U-18 in her club Silkeborg-Voel for the 2015–16 season.

National team

She was called up to Turkey girls' U-17 team debuting Handball at the 2011 European Youth Summer Olympic Festival in

Trabzon Trabzon, historically known as Trebizond, is a city on the Black Sea coast of northeastern Turkey and the capital of Trabzon Province. The city was founded in 756 BC as "Trapezous" by colonists from Miletus. It was added into the Achaemenid E ...

, Turkey. Sara Keçeci became a member of the Turkey team and took part in the qualifications round matches of the 2014 European Championship, 2015 World Championship and 2016 European Championship. On 8 October 2015 she played in the European Championship match for Turkey against the Danish women in her homeland Denmark.

References

External links