Team USA on When The Olympics & Paralympics Became Their Goals
Every Olympian and Paralympian has a moment when they decide to dream big and work towards the games. SELF asked Team USA what moments led them to pursue a spot at the Olympics and Paralympics.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00It definitely wasn't until later in life, I think people always kind of like had murmurs
00:07about it with like, oh, you know, maybe go for the Olympics for field hockey.
00:09And I just like, no, it's not possible.
00:11Tried out rugby and then it was kind of where it started to become a little bit more possible.
00:15And but still my coach was like, oh, you know, you can play for the USA team.
00:17I was like, okay, yeah, it's maybe something but I think it wasn't until like, I would
00:21say senior of college where I was like, this is kind of something I could do and I was
00:25doing nursing.
00:26And so I had to make that decision, like, do I go into nursing, a stable job, stable
00:30income or do I try this 1% of people to go and be an Olympian and I chose the Olympian
00:35and I'm very happy I did.
00:37I think when I first found out that the Olympics were a thing was when I was about six years
00:44old when I won my first medal.
00:47My parents kind of talked about the Olympics and then it wasn't until 2008 when I watched
00:52the Olympics for the first time.
00:53I was like, that's where I want to be.
00:55I don't know the exact year, but it had to be 2004.
00:58I remember being on my grandma's living room and like watching the Olympics happen on TV
01:03and playing basketball enough to be like, I want to be there.
01:07I was a stay-at-home dad, couldn't get a job.
01:10And I saw a guy on TV shooting his bow and that's when I'm like, hey, I'm going to try
01:14this out.
01:15Right.
01:16But it really wasn't until about a couple months later when I went to my first tournament,
01:20so it had been January, like 2011, I believe, that I was educated about what the Paralympics
01:27were.
01:28And then I was like, what is that?
01:29And he's like, we get to go represent America.
01:32I'm like, what?
01:33Competing at the Paralympics became a real goal probably 2016 when I dropped out of college
01:39to go become a professional swimmer and compete at the Paralympics.
01:43When did it become a real like attainable reality?
01:45Okay, there's a real solid chance in reality that we're going to achieve this.
01:51Probably not until after COVID.
01:52Had COVID not happened and the game still happened, Tokyo 2020, good chance I would
01:56not have made the team.
01:57So Tokyo 2021 was, that was my lottery ticket and we cashed it.
02:02Competing at the Olympics became a real goal for me when I was in the hospital after my
02:06accident and then we looked up the dates for Tokyo and I made that decision right there
02:11and then that I was going to be there.
02:12Since I was little, it was always a big goal.
02:14It wasn't really tangible until the second I qualified, to be really honest.
02:19I went into a senior world championships, the pre-Olympic world championships as a 17
02:25year old who had never competed in the senior level before.
02:28It wasn't a feasible thing to go to the Olympics until really I crossed that finish line and
02:33I look around and saw that I won the race.
02:34I was 11 years old.
02:35I was watching the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games and I was unbelievably inspired to see athletes
02:41that looked like me competing on the world stage and it was this out of body epiphany
02:46universe telling me this is your calling type experience where I told my family, I told
02:50my friends that I was going to make the Tokyo Paralympic team in four years.
02:54I was 11 saying this, I would be 15 in Tokyo.
02:57Honestly, I feel like once I made Team USA, like it was realistic, but once we beat China
03:02in 2016, right before the 2016 games, you taste what victory feels like and you taste
03:08what it feels like to actually have your goal come to fruition.
03:12It's always been the goal like since, for me personally, since I was young and I don't
03:16even think I knew what sport and then once I kind of started realizing I was good at
03:20field hockey, I was like, okay, we can actually kind of make this real and then obviously
03:24once we qualified, I was like, here we go.
03:26I always said that I wanted to go to the Olympics and it didn't, it always seemed like the right
03:32path, but I didn't understand how real it could become until probably when I was like
03:3718, 19, we had an athlete qualify in 2020 for the 2021 Olympics and when that happened,
03:45it was like someone that was very close to me, I was like, oh, I can do the same thing.
03:50This can actually happen.
03:51Competing in the Paralympics became a real goal for me in 2008 because that's when I
03:58learned about the Paralympics and honestly, I had no idea what the Paralympics was for
04:03me.
04:04I had to look it up and Google it and I love the idea of representing something so much
04:10more than yourself and representing a country and it's not just you out there.
04:14You have USA and you're united with that and I set out to make those games and I did not.
04:20I failed short to make those games.
04:23That's the moment that I didn't really realize until I didn't make that team how bad I wanted
04:28it.
04:29When I was 18 and it got announced, when it got announced, the games, it was a whole
04:33different experience for me because it finally felt like I could compete for something bigger
04:38than myself.
04:39I started synchro when I was 5 and when I was 7, I watched the next Olympics and I was
04:47still on the novice level.
04:48I hadn't really competed yet.
04:50I was just really learning how to do synchro still, but I saw the Olympics and I was like,
04:56I'm going to be there.
04:57I'm going to be on TV.
04:58I'm going to be at the Olympics.
04:59I think getting to go to the Parapan Am Games in 2015 really showed me that Rio and the
05:04Paralympic Games was a possibility, but I don't think it truly hit me that it was a
05:08goal until that year when I got named to the team that I really wanted to go to the Paralympic
05:13Games.
05:14I've always had Olympic dreams ever since I was little.
05:17Growing up in Alaska, I had so much community sport from a young age, so people would always
05:21refer to me as like, oh, Lydia's our little Olympian ever since I was like 10 years old.
05:26So I just really embodied that and took it with me through the Olympics.
05:29I actually helped to light my first year of playing wheelchair basketball.
05:33My coach basically said that he can see me playing at the highest level, and it kind
05:39of just sparked my interest even more, and I just worked towards that goal with him at
05:44the early stages.
05:46It was a natural progression.
05:47You go to a local meet, qualify for a national meet, and then you go to international competitions.
05:53And then from there, I was qualifying for competitions that were also Olympic qualifiers
05:58for Tokyo.
05:59So once I got into that process, I started to realize this is like a real thing, a real
06:04goal that I could actually achieve.
06:06When I realized I'm pretty good at badminton when I was 24, people keep telling me that,
06:17oh, you should try for Olympics, and you should try to competing that, because I started
06:24to winning some tournaments when I was like pretty young age compared to right now.
06:30So that time, I'm choosing to like trying to compete Olympic games.
06:35I started competing headed towards the Paralympics from a really young age.
06:40So I started on this team when I was 12, and I mean, even from then, it was the goal and
06:46the hope would be that I would make the London team, but I never really knew if it was a
06:50possibility, but my coach really believed in me.
06:53So then leading into the 2012 games, I made the team.
06:56And so that was the start of this journey at 16.