Sümeyye Özcan


Sümeyye Özcan is a Turkish female middle distance runner and goalball player in the B1 class. She is a member of the national team.

Early years

Sümeyye Özcan was born as totally blind in Malatya, Turkey on January 15, 1992. Her elder sister and younger sibling are also blind. Because there was no possibility for blind children to get schooled in Malatya, the family moved to Kahramanmaraş in 2001. She completed Ertuğrul Gazi School for the Blind and Visually Impaired in Kahramanmaraş.

Sporting career

Özcan began with goal playing in 2004, and with athletics in 2009. She competes in the 800m, 1500m and shot put events. She is a member of the both national goalball team and national para-athletics team.
She competed for her school's team in Kahramanmaraş, and took part at the European Championships in 2009 and 2010 after internationally debuting in 2007. She represented her country at the 2011 and 2013 World Championships.
;Para-athletics
She took part in the shot put F12 event at the 2011 IPC Athletics World Championships held in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Özcan competed in the 1500m T11 class event t the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London, United Kingdom. She ran with guide a personal best time of 5:10.68, and placed seventh.
In 2013, she participated in the 1500m T12 class event at the IPC Athletics World Championships held in Lyon, France.
;Goalball
Özcan competes for Kahramanmaraş Ertuğrul Gazi Disabled SK in Kahramanmaraş.
She played for the national team at the Malmö Ladies' and Men's InterCup tournaments in Sweden in 2014 and 2015. The team placed third in 2014 and second in 2015. In 2015, she became top scorer of the tournament with 23 goals.
She enjoyed the champion title with the national team at the 2015 IBSA Goalball European Championships Division A in Kaunas, Lithuania, which was a qualifier competition for the 2016 Paralympics.
She was a member of the women's national goalball team at the 2016 Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Özcan won the gold medal with her teammates at the Paralympics.

Honours

Individual