Danijela was born in Chicago, where she grew up playing a variety of sports, distinguishing herself in high school as a talented swimmer and water polo player as well as a regular member of the basketball team. It was water polo at which she most excelled, however, and she assisted her club teams to a third place finish at the US Championships in 2012, eighth at the 2012 Junior Olympics and second at the Junior Olympics in 2013.
After enrolling at Stanford University, however, water polo became Danijela’s primary sport and she quickly established herself as a stalwart member of the team, scoring 106 career goals, including 11 hat-tricks. She also claimed a gold medal at the 2017 World University Games.
In 2019, Danijela moved to Cronulla, a suburb of Sydney in New South Wales, where she works as a biomechanical engineer while also playing for the Australian national team. At this year’s world championships in Doha, Qatar, Danijela assisted the Australian team to a sixth place finish, having beaten Great Britain 20-8 in the round of 16 before going down by a point to the USA in the quarter-finals.
Paris Result:
Silver medal.