Paralysed Secunda teen becomes a tennis ace after car crash

The teen watches the tennis ball coming at her. She adjusts her position, swings her racquet and thwacks the ball back over the net.

Susan van Niekerk, a Grade 8 pupil at Hoërskool Secunda in Mpumalanga, is all smiles as she practises on the school tennis court with her coach, Lezahn Greeff.

The only unusual thing about this otherwise entirely ordinary picture is that Susan is in a wheelchair. She’s paralysed from the waist down after breaking her lower spine in a car accident in 2010.