Noa-Lynn van Leuven isn’t a morning person. Ever since she was young, she remembers struggling, as many people do, to escape the warm, safe confines of her bed.

Her pre-12 am struggles were at their worst while working as a baker in her hometown of Beverwijk, a small town on the western cost of the Netherlands 21 miles from Amsterdam.

Each day she would wake up at the ungodly hour of 5am to make it into work – a feat which, despite preferring her creature comforts, she regularly managed to achieve.

You’ve likely seen Noa in the news over the past year or so, particularly if you follow the (frankly) misinformed mess that is the debate on trans people in sports. Among other things, she is a professional darts player who over her career has won three gold medals, two silver, and a bronze.

However, her commendable track record isn’t the thing that has made headlines. The main focus of news stories around Noa is the fact that fellow darts play Deta Hedman twice refused to compete against her, after losing to Noa in the 2023 Dutch Open.

Since then, Noa has been vilified by gender-critical figures and the hostile right-wing media as an obstacle who supposedly “stole” Hedman’s and other women’s chances at victory and is undeserving of her accolades.

It’s worth noting at this point that Noa went on to lose the tournament against Aildeen de Graaf in a 4-0 washout.

Noa’s passion for the sport she loves can be traced back, as with many other professional players, all the way to her childhood. In fact, she says her family was built on the back of darts.

Noa’s relationship with her family and darts are intertwined

“My parents met each other in the pub whilst playing darts,” she tells me. “My grandfather on my mum’s side, who I’ve never actually met, played darts. And my dad played darts. That’s where [my mum and dad] met each other.”

Some of her earliest memories were of watching her father play darts with his local team.

Aged just 8 years old, her parents would take her with them to their local venue and, for an hour or so, she would witness her dad in his element at the oche.

Naturally, she eventually picked up her own set of darts and, by the time she turned 14, began participating in competitions rather than “just throwing three pointy things at a board.” The game was an integral part of her family life and the foundation she grew up on – except for her sister, who isn’t a huge fan.

Noa’s childhood was, she admits, incredibly rough. She recalls being bullied relentlessly at school and struggled to find her place in life.

But she did have one safe haven; her grandmother’s house. Every possible chance she could, Noa travelled down to see her grandma, where she helped her with her daily chores, spent the days chatting, and, Noa’s favourite activity, cooked together. It’s where she felt the safest.

“I guess one of the biggest [reasons I saw my grandma so often] is that she actually just listened, did not judge, or anything like that,” she says. “It was close to home, but in a totally different neighbourhood where I didn’t get bullied.”

‘It felt like a safe and great group where everyone could just come in to yap’

Her time at her grandmother’s helped to influence her love of cooking. Noa currently works as a chef de partie for a local restaurant, a job that’s both fulfilling and stressful. Noa’s biggest pet peeve with work is, without a doubt, any requests to alter dishes near the end of a shift, which typically means she has to do overtime.

“If we have been struggling all night altering dishes taking ingredients out, [the customers] always order [something extra] like a cappuccino or hot chocolate with whipped cream, a fresh pastry, and of course a cookie.”

When she isn’t under pressure, Noa actually loves making desserts. She hasn’t got a favourite dish in particular, but says she loves “playing around” with different kinds of pastries and other sweet treats.

More recently, she’s gotten into bouldering – free-form indoor climbing – and even joined a queer club in March this year.

“I found an online WhatsApp group with a local queer community, in that community there was also a queer climbing group,” she says. “It took me a month or two to find the courage to join them on a bouldering evening. The first time I did, it felt like a safe and great group where everyone could either just come in to yap, or keep climbing until you finished your energy.”

For Noa, the draw of bouldering is, much like her love of darts, the problem-solving aspect of it. It involves finding the best possible way to achieve a route. It was the sport that drew her in, but the community she found that kept her going.

“They have seen me in a bad place, and they kept me going,” she says.

‘I actually felt recognised. I felt recognition in their story’

While she is proud of how far she’s come, Noa struggles with confidence issues and sometimes finds herself struggling. Finding spaces like her bouldering group, which she does purely recreationally, help her to feel comfortable in her identity not just as a trans woman, but as a human being.

Like many trans people, the underlying feeling that something wasn’t right gnawed at her, until she finally acted on her feelings aged 17.

“Small signs were always there,” she says. “I played dress up with my sister and would always end up in a dress and make-up. But I think the first real sign was when I watched a documentary about Dutch trans people. I actually felt recognised. I felt recognition in their stories.”

12 years on, Noa has learned so much about herself and the world by accepting her identity. One of her dreams in life is to give back to the community that she confides in.

“[I’d like to] maybe open a safe space or community center for trans/queer people where they could just be themselves and hang out with each other,” she says.

When Noa comes home from the end of a long day, her favourite pastimes are watching TV or reading books. She started Grey’s Anatomy two months ago and is on season four right now.

“The book I’m currently reading before bed is The Kitchen. During the day I’ve been reading a lot of autobiographies”

Noa is a human being, like you or me. Her life has so many facets that reading about her in the news simply doesn’t show. She has become a tool of judgement by those who seek to make trans lives worse – a manufactured obstacle. Her resistance has been to continue to live authentically, whether they like it or not.

“I am just another person like anyone else who just wants to be respect for who I am,” she says. “I am allowed to be myself.”

The post Trans Awareness Week 2025: Darts player Noa-Lynn van Leuven is a human, not an obstacle appeared first on PinkNews | Latest lesbian, gay, bi and trans news | LGBTQ+ news.