Chelsea McClammer
U.S. Paralympic Organization
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.
