“I knew that I was transgender since I was four,” says Hamilton, who grew up on Scotland’s west coast and says she had to “hide it a bit” at high school.
“When I was 14-15, I started to understand what was going on with my head and my body. I went across to the US to coach for seven years and I was married over there. I got the divorce and had to come home. After that I knew there was only one way forward and that was to transition.”
Hamilton, a student at the University of Aberdeen, played for the men’s team for two years as a goalkeeper, before a life-changing decision when attending a sports ball.
“I spilled my guts to the boys saying, listen, ‘I can’t go to the sports ball unless I go as my true self’. They were very, very supportive.”
Hamilton was then asked to play for the women’s team, which she says was “something I never actually thought was possible”.
“If you asked me a year and a half ago, I couldn’t honestly believe that’s what’s happened,” she says.
“I was going to have to stop playing men’s football because the hormones take such a toll on your body that your muscles waste away – you’re not as strong, not as fast.
“Being a goalkeeper, as I was back in men’s football, your reactions get slower so it was getting harder and harder to play. I was very lucky the girls’ team picked me up and said ‘here, you can come in’. “