A week after she made a lap of honor through De Oude Meerdijk together with the FC Emmen selection, Jasmijn Nijhuis (8) is slowly recovering from the very last course of chemotherapy. The tumor in her hip should have completely disappeared after a series of treatments, allowing her to call herself cancer-free. These are surreal weeks for the crowd favorite of FC Emmen.
“It was great fun. It brought tears to my eyes,” she says from the center of the stadium of her favorite club. She has been a fan for as long as she can remember. She is allowed to hold the bowl again, which she also held up during the ceremony. “Mom, what does KNVB mean?” she asks, as she reads the text on the scale.
It all starts when FC Emmen Naoberschap, the social branch of the Drenthe club, receives a phone call from Saskia: whether the club can do anything for her daughter. “We then, in collaboration with EFDN (a network for professional football organizations that use football as a means of social activities, ed.), ensured that they could experience the rise of FC Emmen from the hospital via a robot,” says Jos FC Emmen scissors. And she got all kinds of stuff from FC Emmen to decorate her room with.
Goalkeeper trainer Richard Moes sees Jasmijn standing next to the podium during the championship party and asks mother Saskia if she might want to go on the podium. Jasmijn is willing to listen and many hands make light work. In no time she stands proudly on stage with the bowl in her hands in front of a frenzied Drenthe crowd.