My name is Karina Balasanian and I want to share my story.

I was born on 21/01/2008 in Russia 🇷🇺, but my nationality is Armenian.

I started playing tennis at the age of 5 in Batumi, Georgia 🇬🇪. After some time, I moved out of Georgia at the age of 7 to the Russian capital, Moscow.

I began training in an academy where a bunch of kids loved picking on me; I tried my real best to avoid them and doing my own thing but they kept picking on me. The years went by in  Russia and I wasn't able to win a single match at the Federation. Things got worse but I kept training harder, even though it was so difficult for me.

In 2018, the situation changed. Before leaving Russia forever, we went to Valencia once for a holiday and, afterwards, we decided to move to Spain because of the climate conditions and of course for a new tennis adventure. I went to Spain for the first time and trained at the Andres Gimeno Academy for two months when I was 10 years old. While I trained there, I started to compete for the first time ever at FCT, and there I won my first Monty tour at the Bruguera Tennis Academy.

At the age of 12 I started to play in a cadet category and 6 months later I got into a final and lost 0/6 3/6 at the Andres Gimeno tournament. 6 months later I turned 13 and started playing an absolute category, which is the highest category. I even skipped juniors. I lost a lot of matches in the absolute category but still did my best and kept playing.

The time went by, I went to another academy in Barcelona where I trained for 2 years. It was a frustrating time in my life because of another bullying experience. In 2023 I decided to leave but I didn’t know where to go. Suddenly I met Jordane Doble, with whom I have been training ever since.

I have won several Federation tournaments and my ranking rose. I have won three cadet titles, have been a cadet finalist and have won one junior title. I have been improving a lot.

The start of 2024 was difficult. At the beginning of the year I won another junior title and started playing absolute tournaments. It was hard because I was basically losing first and second rounds; however, I kept playing these tournaments, giving myself opportunities to test myself. Monty absolute category tournaments were the only ones which convinced me during all that time. Even though I lost in finals or semis, I kept playing.

In the summer 2024 I ended up finalist of an absolute TPR (Tennis Planet Rating), which really changed a lot for me.

In September 2024, I started training at the Barcelona Tennis Academy and for some reasons it makes me feel better and special. Now I’ve played more absolute tournaments and I have been constantly improving. Also I started to play ITF tournaments so that I can play and gain UTR points.