“These Are My People” – The World of Para-Swimming, Part 2

In my last post, I shared about Sarah Kate’s recent experience in Augusta, Georgia, in a development camp with US Paralympics Swimming. Today I’m talking about the disability swim meet that followed. If you haven’t yet, I encourage you to read Part 1 here.

The 7th Annual Fred Lamback Disability Meet

Saturday Morning Session

When we arrived at the Augusta Aquatics Center on Saturday morning, the small handful of swimmers from camp had exploded to include an array of new faces. All of the meet officials were dressed in matching US Paralympic Team polo shirts – it was a bit intimidating! Sarah Kate was nervous but excited to see what she could do in field of similarly-abled athletes, and the warmup helped calm her jitters a bit. Her biggest concern was feeling like she had to do a diving start instead of a water start. She talked to Coach Tom about it for a bit, and while he encouraged her to dive, he left it up to her, which was all the permission she needed to fall back on her familiar and safe water start.

Just moments before the meet started, the father of one of the camp swimmers came over and told her he wanted her to come meet someone. We followed him, and found none other than four-time medalist and two-time Paralympian McKenzie Coan sitting on the bleachers, getting ready to swim. McKenzie is one of the other swimmers we’ve been following for a few years – she has osteogenesis imperfecta (long-time readers will recall six-year-old Megan, our young cousin with OI). Seated next to McKenzie was Colleen Young, another medalist and US Paralympian, who is legally blind due to albinism. I’m not ashamed to admit – we were both a little starstruck!

Although the swimmers competed only against other swimmers in their classification, the heats were seeded based on times, regardless of classification. Sarah Kate’s first event was the 100 IM, and right away we could see that she would almost certainly be last in her heat but first in her class, as she was swimming with Colleen, McClain, and two other SM9 swimmers. Yes, you read that right – in Sarah Kate’s first ever paraswimming event she swam with two members of the US Paralympic Team!

But there was no time to dwell on just how crazy that seemed, because when she got in the pool and prepared to start, she hit her first hurdle. The design of the pool’s gutter made it nearly impossible for her to grip the edge of the pool. She tried using the gutter itself, but the official nearest her lane blew his whistle at her and told her she couldn’t do that. I was standing next to the block and could see a mildly panicked look in her eyes as she desperately tried to hold onto the edge. Her hand slipped just as the starting buzzer sounded, which made her start messy but at least didn’t result in a DQ. Even with the start issue, the changes to her breaststroke technique helped her beat her prior best in the event by almost 10 seconds.

Not long after Sarah Kate swam, one of the team coaches, Teresa, came over to talk to Sarah Kate. She asked her a number of questions about herself and her training. When she learned that Sarah Kate was only swimming three days a week with her high school team, she expressed both surprise and tiny bit of disapproval, telling Sarah Kate that she had God-given talent and needed to be in the pool at least five or six days a week. I thanked her for taking an interest in her and volunteered that this was her first disability meet, we weren’t able to bring her coach with us, and I knew very little about swimming. She offered to provide Sarah Kate with some dry land exercises (she felt her core was weak) and her contact information for when we got back home.

Sarah Kate’s second event was the 50 yard freestyle. Once again, she tried to start in the water, and once again she had trouble gripping the edge of the pool. At the last second, I pressed my fingers on top of hers to keep her from slipping. It worked, but she had a problem and with several more events scheduled for the weekend, we needed to come up with a solution – fast.

When her race was over, I ran over to speak with Glen, the technical classifier, to ask him what assistance was allowed. He assured me that what I had done was legal, but reiterated what the coaches had said on Day 1 of camp – she needs to do a diving start. I knew it wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but I relayed the message. (Oh, and if you’re wondering how she did in that event – she got smoked by, uh…McKenzie Coan 😉 )

Sarah Kate finished out the morning session with the 50 yard backstroke, which gave her a breather on the start issue. She was first in her heat, which didn’t really mean anything because classes S6, S7, and S8 were all represented, but was still pretty exciting because it rarely happens at home unless she’s the only swimmer in the heat. 😉

Saturday Afternoon Session

The rocky starts in her first two races had Sarah Kate worried. She’s never been DQ’d in a race before and she didn’t want the first time to be in this venue. We returned from lunch a little early and she enlisted Coach Tom to help her work on a diving start. She never got completely comfortable with it, but she did it for her next two events. The first of those was the 25 yard butterfly, and she nailed it! When she came up she looked fantastic – and she had just learned to swim the butterfly for the first time back in July.

Sarah Kate finished up the day with the 100 yard freestyle and 25 yard backstroke. As the session was finishing up, Coach Tom walked up, phone in hand, to where Sarah Kate was seated on the bleachers and told her she had a call. It was her swimming hero, Cortney Jordan! The two spoke for several minutes; Cortney gave Sarah Kate her phone number so they could keep in touch, and since then she they have communicated a few times about various topics.

Sunday Morning Session

We found a church with a Saturday Vigil Mass not far away and went directly there from the pool, then settled back in at the hotel for dinner, excited to see what Sunday morning would bring. But Sunday morning brought pain, and lots of it, in Sarah Kate’s shoulder. She tried a warm shower, hoping maybe it was mostly just stiff, but I had my doubts she would be able to swim. She dressed and we headed to the pool, anyway.

She spoke to the coaches and they warned her not to do anything to injure herself. Coach Teresa also came over to check her out and expertly massaged her shoulder. In the end, she decided not to swim. It was a tough choice (and a little disappointing) because Sunday was the only day she had planned to swim breaststroke, but in the end it was the correct one because she was back to full speed by the end of the week. She had worked incredibly hard for three straight days and it caught up with her.

But the decision not to swim wound up being a blessing in disguise. We had met so many people and made many new friends, but the pace of both the camp and the meet meant we had little time to sit down and enjoy our time with them. Not swimming changed that. We stuck around through the end of the meet, learning more about people’s lives and families and getting to know some who had only been friendly acquaintances the day before. We promised to stay in touch with everyone, from the mom and daughter who brought extra snacks in their cooler for Nathan to the military veteran who had been injured in a bomb blast, to the parents of the kids with cerebral palsy that we bonded with on the first day.

As promised, Coach Teresa sent Sarah Kate home with a list of dry land exercises, her contact information, and an offer of support if she or her coach wanted it and it was only when I took the piece of paper from her that we realized her full name was Teresa Coan – McKenzie’s mom.

Sarah Kate had spent some time earlier in the weekend with McClain, but now she also had the opportunity to visit with McKenzie and Colleen, set a goal to qualify for nationals (she would – just one week later), and dream a little bit about following in their footsteps by as a future Paralympian.

As she said in the beginning, the swimmers in Augusta were her people, and the family members who came along for the ride were mine.

Coming Soon to the Blog:
Sarah Kate competes for the first time in breaststroke using her new technique, we do a little research into just how fast Sarah Kate might be, and some opportunities we never dreamed possible open up for Sarah Kate (and one of them is this weekend!)