Paralympian McClammer's Talent Taking Her Places

The luggage drops and there is a moment of awkwardness. Helping hands seem to converge from everywhere, but Chelsea McClammer will beam that smile of hers while she reaches down to grab her bags and politely says, “Thank you, I have it, I can handle it.”
 
It could be in an airport. In a classroom. Going down the steep grassy hill behind Kiona-Benton High (Washington State) to make track practice each afternoon. Or at the Penn Relays. McClammer can handle anything.
 
She’s a world-class athlete, but also someone who is highly independent. Despite being in a wheelchair since she was 6-years-old, due to a spinal injury she suffered in a car accident, McClammer eschews definitions society, whether it’s the small enclave of the high school teenaged world, or the larger society as a whole, may place on her.
 
McClammer is one of the best wheelchair racers in the world. It’s an ability that’s brought the high school freshman to almost every corner of the United States, and internationally to Beijing, China, where she competed in the 800-meter race at the Paralympic Games last fall.
 
She’s a rarity, not because she’s in a wheelchair, but because she was the youngest competitor on the U.S. Paralympic team and in almost every major event she attends. What’s more, McClammer has only been competing for a little over four years—going against athletes who range in age from 19 to 36 who have been competing much longer.
 
McClammer turned 15 on March 1. She was just 14 in Beijing, where she finished eighth in the world in the 800. She’ll compete about a month from now in the Washington State track and field championship.
 
But she doesn’t view herself as an inspiration. Just an athlete.
 
“That’s it,” McClammer said. “I really don’t care how people look at me, or how they think of me, because Paralympics often gets confused with the Special Olympics a lot, and we just correct that. I’m not offended by it or anything, but I sometimes used to get offended by what people used to say, and asked how I did certain things, like how I slept. But we’re athletes, we’re all athletes with special skills, and that’s the way I see myself.”

McClammer’s life took a drastic spin the day she was driving with her mother, Rebecca, and her brother. Chelsea was just 6 at the time, sitting in the backseat of the car.
 
“I’m only the one in the accident that could remember all of it,” McClammer said. “I was in the backseat and we went off the side of the road when there was an oncoming car headed toward us. My mother and brother were okay, but I was kind of confused by what was going on. I remember not being able to move my legs. I broke my back, but didn’t feel it, because the actual break didn’t hurt.
 
“The car was catching on fire and I couldn’t get out. Firemen pulled me from the car. The accident didn’t really hit me until when I woke up in the hospital. I didn’t freak out or anything, because I couldn’t feel anything. The doctor came in and told me that I was paralyzed and they told me they could try and find a cure. They never did. I accepted it pretty quickly, because I was only six, and I only had six years of life experience before that. It’s not like I knew much about life before that.”
 
She doesn’t see herself as courageous. Her parents, stepfather Jeff and mother Rebecca, have made sure Chelsea was mainstreamed. The first year back in kindergarten, Chelsea noticed other kids playing with toys. That didn’t stop her from building enough strength to play on the monkey bars. Even at a young age, she refused to be defined by the accident.
 
“The way I see it what I have is more like an ability, than a disability, because not every kid gets to do what I do now,” McClammer said. “I get to see the world, and not many kids my age can do that, doing something I like.”
 
She was introduced to wheelchair racing when she was 11, after going to a sports convention. She was connected with coach Theresa Skinner, who opened up the competitive world of racing to her.
 
“I wanted to try new things; I never saw anything like it before,” McClammer recalls. “The first time I did it, it was definitely harder than I expected and I think I actually beat someone. It felt like the coolest thing ever, and it still is to me.”
 
McClammer started to realize she was pretty good. By 12, she qualified for nationals in Tampa, Fla., in the T-53 category (the categories range from T-52 to T-55, the lower the number the higher level of disability). By the time McClammer was 13, and the nationals came to Spokane, Wash., racing took off for her.
 
“That’s when I started to really like it, there was better competition and that brought out the competitive side in me,” McClammer said. “I’m a competitive person, and people started beating me, I started working harder. It is a big demand. We’re all athletes, no matter what. We still train and work as hard as other athletes.”
 
At the Paralympic Trials for the Beijing team, in Mesa, Ariz., in May 2008, McClammer went for a personal-best time. That’s all. She never intended to make the U.S. team. She got a little more than she expected. She finished second in the 800, behind world-class Tatyana McFadden—qualifying for the U.S. Paralympic Team.
 
She’s getting better. In front of thousands at the Penn Relays, at Pennsylvania University’s Franklin Field on April 24, McClammer finished fifth in the 400-meter race in a personal-best time of 59.29.
 
Then she went back on the U.S. team bus to the hotel where the team was staying, and packed her bags to leave on a plane the next morning. She was there by herself, with no out stretched hands.
 
“I’m just having fun with it,” McClammer said. “I travel by myself now. We go in the team van to the hotel and then at the airport, and we get ourselves home. I don’t need anyone to hold my hand. The word ‘Never’ isn’t in my vocabulary. Everyone in school thinks it’s really cool what I do. They do. Every track I go to, it’s all amazing. A lot of these meets are really new to me.”
 
That feeling of newness, she hopes, will never change.  “There have been so many places in the world and in the country, and it’s always a new experience, with different people to meet,” she said.
 
Her ultimate goal is getting a gold medal in 2012, in London, where she’ll carry her own bags again, thank you.
 
Joseph Santoliquito covers high schools for the Philadelphia Daily News and is a frequent contributor to MaxPreps.com. He can be contacted at JSantoliquito@yahoo.com.