Coming from a family of doctors, pursuing a career in physiotherapy and injury management in sports came naturally to Poland's Oliwia Witek.

But even then, the 28-year-old had to battle perceptions and questions about her profession of treating injured sportsmen, more so after joining Gujarat Fortune Giants in Pro Kabaddi League as the head physiotherapist.She is the only woman physio in a league that comprises burly men playing a contact sport.

"Everybody tells me, 'what do you do with men's team from India?' I say, 'all my life I've worked only with men'. Even in Poland," Witek tells DNA.

Back in her hometown Warsaw, Witek runs a clinic with specialisation in sports injuries, besides working as a physio for an American football team. She also accompanied the Polish national team that visited India in the Kabaddi World Cup in Ahmedabad last year.

That's when she fell in love with kabaddi as well as India, and decided to come back to the country as the head physio of the Gujarat team.

Her latest role, though not complex, brought with itself a set of varied challenges.

"It's not hard work. It's very easy work. It's like if you know what you're doing, everything is easy for you.

"But the Indian food was a challenge. Also, the players don't know English. But that also was taken care of because Hindi is not a very hard language, and now it is very easy to communicate with them," she says.

The Gujarat franchise has 19 players, 16 Indians and three foreigners, and Witek's primary task was to make each one of them feel comfortable with a female physio.

"When we first met, they didn't know me. But after some time, they saw that everything was normal, just like how it is. They had to accept me," she says.

"Maybe, the first seven days was a challenge in trying to build some kind of relation with them. But after one week, everything was normal. Now, it's like a family. We don't have problems. I treat them very, very good. They also treat me very, very good," she says.

And she's quick to add: "We're like brothers and sisters."

Part of her relation with the players is also to understand a sportsperson's mentality during injuries, which comes as naturally to her as her career in physiotherapy.

"Back in school, I was in the volleyball and softball teams. So, I was very well connected with sport. But I was always better in my studies, and that's why I decided to become a physio.

"My specialisation is sports injury. I can work with and deal with sportsmen because I know their mentality. I know a thing or two about sports as well. And I enjoy sports. That's why I stay in sports, and I help them," she says.Treating injuries aside, a major chunk of her role is to ensure that the players remain fit throughout the gruelling, non-stop three-month long kabaddi league.

"What we're doing is injury prevention. They have a lot of exercises, and a lot of recovery training. All the time, I talk to the coach, telling him, 'we must do this, we must do that'. Our coaches are very good, and they were also kabaddi players. So, they know about injuries from a players' perspective.

"I was never a kabaddi player, but I know different things. So, it's about trying to connect the information and create a good chance for players to be injury-free. We do everything we can do be strong," she says.

And she hopes to do that not just in this season, but for years to come in the same sport and league.

"No, no, no," she shoots back when asked if she would like to venture into new sports as a physio.

"My future is kabaddi, my future is Gujarat. I don't know if I will go home," she says with a chuckle.