Team USA on When The Olympics & Paralympics Became Their Goals

It definitely wasn't until later in life I think people

always kinda like had murmurs about it with like, oh,

maybe you go for the Olympics for field hockey.

And I just like, no, it's not possible.

Tried out rugby and then it was kind of where it started

to become a little bit more possible

but still my coach was like, oh,

you can play for the USA team.

I was like, okay, yeah, it's maybe something,

but I think it wasn't until like I would say senior

of college where I was like, this is kind

of something I could do.

And I was doing nursing so I had to make

that decision like do I go into nursing, a stable job,

stable income, or do I try this 1% of people

to go and be an Olympian?

And I chose the Olympian and I'm very happy I did.

Well I think when I first found out that the Olympics were

a thing was when I was about six years old when I won,

won my first medal, my parents kind of

talked about the Olympics

and then it wasn't until 2008 when I watched the Olympics

for the first time, I was like, that's where I wanna be.

I don't know the exact year, but it had to be 2004.

I remember being in my grandma's living room

and like watching the Olympics happen on TV

and playing basketball enough

to be like, I want to be there.

I was a stay at home dad couldn't get a job

and I saw a guy on TV shooting his bow

and that's when I'm like,

hey, I am gonna try this out, right?

But it really wasn't until about couple months later

when I went to my first tournament,

so it'd been January like 2011, I believe,

that I was educated about what the Paralympics were.

And then I was like, what is that?

And he's like, we get to go represent America.

I'm like, what?

Competing at the Paralympics became a real goal probably

2016 when I dropped outta college

to go become a professional swimmer

and compete at the Paralympics.

When did it become a real like attainable reality?

Okay, there's a real solid chance in reality

that we're gonna achieve this really not until

after COVID.

Had COVID not happened and the game still happened,

Tokyo 2020, good chance I would not have made the team.

So Tokyo 2021 was, that was my lottery ticket

and we cashed it.

Competing at the Olympics became a real goal

for me when I was in the hospital after my accident.

And then we looked up the dates for Tokyo

and I made that decision

right there and then that I was gonna be there.

Since I was little.

It was always a big goal.

It wasn't really tangible until the second I qualified.

To be really honest, I went into a senior world

championships, the pre-Olympic World Championships

as a 17-year-old

who had never competed in the senior level before.

It wasn't a feasible thing to go to the Olympics

until really I crossed that finish line and I look around

and saw that I won the race.

I was 11 years old, I was watching the Rio 2016 Paralympic

games and I was unbelievably inspired to see athletes

that looked like me competing on the world stage.

And it was this out of body epiphany universe telling me,

this is your calling type experience.

Where I told my family, I told my friends

that I was gonna make the Tokyo Paralympic

team in four years.

I was 11 saying this, I would be 15 in Tokyo.

Honestly, I feel like once I made Team USA,

like it was realistic, but once we beat China in 2016,

right before the 2016 games,

you taste what victory feels like

and you taste what it feels like to actually have

your goal come to fruition.

It's always been the goal.

Like since, for me personally,

since I was young and I didn't even think I knew what sport

and then once I kind

of started realizing I was good at field hockey, I was like,

okay, we can actually kind of make this real.

And then obviously once we qualified I was like, here we go.

I always said that I wanted to go to the Olympics

and it didn't, it always seemed like the right path,

but I didn't understand how real it could become

until probably on when I was like 18, 19,

we had an athlete qualify in 2020

for the 2021 Olympics.

And when that happened, it was like someone

that was very close to me, I was like, oh,

I can do the same thing.

Like this can actually happen.

Competing in the Paralympics became a real goal for me in

2008 because that's when I learned about the Paralympics

and honestly, I had no idea what the Paralympics was for me.

I had to look it up and Google it.

And I love the idea of representing something

so much more than yourself and representing a country.

And it's not just you out there.

You have USA and you're united with that.

And I set out to make those games

and I did not, I failed short to make those games.

That's the moment that I didn't really realize

until I didn't make that team how bad I wanted it.

When I was 18 and it got announced.

When it got announced to the games,

it was a whole different experience for me

because it finally felt like I could compete

for something bigger than myself.

I started synchro when I was five

and when I was seven I watched the next Olympics

and I was still on the novice level.

I hadn't really competed yet.

I was just really learning how to do syncro still.

But I saw the Olympics and I was like,

I'm gonna be there.

I'm gonna be on TV, I'm gonna be at the Olympics.

And getting to go to the Para PanAm games in 2015

really showed me that Rio

and the Paralympic Games was a possibility.

But I don't think it truly hit me that it was a goal until

that year when I got named to the team

that I really wanted to go to the Paralympic Games.

I've always had Olympic dreams ever since I was little.

Growing up in Alaska,

I had so much community sport from a young age,

so people would always refer to me as like, oh,

Lydia's our little Olympian.

Ever since I was like 10 years old.

So I just really embodied that

and took it with me through the Olympics.

I actually have to, like my first year

of playing wheelchair basketball, my coach basically said

that I could, he can see me playing at the highest level.

I mean, it kind of just sparked my interest even more.

And I just worked towards that goal with him

at the early stages.

It was a natural progression.

You go to a local meet, qualify for a national meet,

and then you go to international competitions.

And then from there I was qualifying for competitions

that were also Olympic qualifiers for Tokyo.

So once I got into that process, I started

to realize this is like a real thing, a real goal

that I could actually achieve.

When I realized I'm pretty good at badminton.

When I, oh 24,

people are keep telling me that,

oh, you should try for Olympics

and you should try to compete in that

because I'm start

to winning some tournaments when I was like pretty young age

compared to right now.

So that time I'm choosing to like trying

to compete Olympic Games.

I started competing,

headed towards the Paralympics from a really young age.

So I started on this team when I was 12.

And I mean, even from then it was the goal

and the hope would be that I would make the London team,

but I never really knew if it was a possibility,

but my coach really believed in me.

So then leading into the 2012 games, I made the team.

And so that was the start of this journey at 16.