Excellence in Disability

Born with three congenital amputations, her disability doesn’t stop her from achieving and accomplishing things. This is for 16-year old Kayla Wheeler who, despite with no arms and legs, excelled in sports and in other activities she is involved with.

Kayla holds the Paralympic world record in the 50-meter butterfly in swimming, and skis, bowls and plays baseball too when she’s not swimming. And even with her active participation in sports, she still maintains good scholastic records in school having a 3.8 grade-point average. Kayla also is on the Rocketry and Robotics Team and is taking advanced classes at a college school in the U.S.

In swimming, she has competed in countries like Mexico, the Netherlands and Brazil. She is preparing for the International Paralympic World Championships in August in Montreal. She also hopes to make it to the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio de Janiero.

Kayla’s mom, Joyce wheeler said that she is amazed at her child when her name was called to represent their country. She said, “she got goosebumps all over”. Kayla when born, was recommended by a doctor to go through swimming lessons as a form of therapy,

Swimmers like her are broken into different class levels based on how disabled they are. She qualified for the 2012 London Paralympic Games but couldn’t go because there weren’t enough people to compete against in the S1 Level -which the most disabled one can be and can still swim.

According to her, she likes to represent her country. She added that more than garnering records and getting medals in her sport, she also likes being a role model to others in her achievements.

Next year she will be a senior and is already thinking about what college she wants to attend and is considering the University of Washington and Yale.

Her mom said that they’ve always motivated Kayla that there is nothing that she can’t do and they just have to figure out a different way for her to do it.

Source: msn.com, www.yahoo.com