4 Famous Athletes Who Have a Disability

Just because you have a physical disability, it does not mean that your love of sports is restricted to fantasy football or sports gambling, or Everygame casino no deposit bonus game playing on your laptop.

Many people with disabilities “take advantage of their strengths to compensate for their weaknesses.” It starts with learning about yourself, so you can understand what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are.

Here is a secret that successful people don’t want you to know: everybody has strengths and everybody has weaknesses. The ones who are successful understand that, and the ones who are not don’t understand that.

Aaron Fotheringham

Aaron Fotheringham is also one of the most famous skaters in the world. His specialty? Wheelchair skating. Aaron Fotheringham was born with spina bifida.

Aaron Fotheringham is an extreme wheelchair athlete who performs tricks adapted from skateboarding and BMX. He competes in the Vegas Am Jam series in skate park competitions, usually against BMX riders.

He is the first person to successfully perform a backflip in a wheelchair at the age of 14, and a double backflip at the age of 18.

He performs many other tricks in his wheelchair including 180 degree ‘aerials’, one-wheeled spins, and rail grinds. He plans to fuse the back flip with the 180 aerial into what is known as a ‘flair’.

When he was a young boy, he used crutches early on, but he has been a wheelchair user full-time since the age of eight. He would watch his brother riding his BMX at the skate park, and one day his brother told him that he should try riding his chair in the park.

Fotheringham uses a customized WCMX wheelchair designed by Box Wheelchairs, which is both lightweight and features four-wheel suspension. This enables him to perform the same sorts of tricks that skateboarders and BMXers can do, as the suspension cushions his landings.

Fotheringham has worked with Box Designs Wheelchairs to help refine the design in real-world situations, resulting in a custom-made chair that is in his words, “pretty much indestructible”.

In 2022, he competed on America’s Got Talent: Extreme. After receiving Nikki Bella’s golden buzzer in the audition round, he advanced to the finale, and earned second place.

Rebecca Meyers

Rebecca Meyers (born November 20, 1994, in Baltimore) is a Paralympic swimmer from the United States. She won three gold and one silver medals in Rio 2016. She was also a member of the 2012 Paralympic Team, and won a silver and bronze in London. Rebecca Meyers also competed at the 2009 Summer Deaflympics which was held in Taiwan.

Meyers has Usher syndrome and has been deaf since she was born. Since she was young she has used a cochlear implant, an electronic device that allows her to hear. Meyers is also losing her vision to a disease called retinitis pigmentosa (RP), and has a Seeing Eye dog named Birdie, who helps her navigate the world.

She grew up in Baltimore, attended Notre Dame Prep, and went on to graduate from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania where she studied history with a concentration in Disability Studies.

In June 2021 the US announced the 34 Paralympic swimmers who would be going to the delayed 2020 Summer Paralympics in Tokyo. The women’s team was Meyers, Jessica Long, McKenzie Coan, Elizabeth Marks, and Mallory Weggemann. On July 20, 2021, Meyers withdrew from the Paralympics after being denied her request for a personal care assistant due to the reduced allocation of staff members amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Matt Brown (parathlete)

Matthew S. Brown, known as Matt P.F. Brown (born November 24, 1976), is currently a football and track and field coach at Idalou High School in Idalou in Lubbock County, Texas. He is also a gold and bronze winner in the Parapan American Games. Brown’s left leg was amputated above the knee because of an accidental industrial explosion on December 20, 2005.

In September 2007, Brown won a gold medal in the discus, having set a record throw of 154 feet 9 inches (47.17 m), and a bronze in the shot put at the 2007 Parapan American Games held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He also competed in the 2008 Summer Paralympic Games in Beijing, where he finished fourth in the men’s discus.

On July 12, 2011, Brown was suspended for three months by the Paralympic team after a United States Anti-Doping Agency test revealed the presence of a marijuana metabolite in his body. He was also made ineligible to participate in official track and field events for a calendar year. He tested positive for marijuana again in a June 2012 test and was again suspended for twelve months.

Who knows what his sports career might have been if he did not waste his talents on using marijuana? Yes, marijuana is legal in several states in the US, but that does not mean that it will not affect your ability to do sports.

Amy Bockerstette

Amy Bockerstette (born October 15, 1998) is an American competitive amateur golfer and disabilities advocate with Down syndrome. She is the first person with Down syndrome to both receive an athletic scholarship to attend college and also to compete in a national collegiate championship.

In high school, Bockerstette became the first person with Down syndrome to play in the Arizona High School Girls Golf Division I State Championship, where she competed as both a junior and senior. In 2017, she was honored at the AZCentral.com Sports Awards with the Best Moment of the Year Award for Arizona High School Sports.

As a representative of Special Olympics Arizona, Bockerstette played in the LPGA Bank of Hope Founders Cup Pro-Am with professional golfers Sarah Jane Smith and Gerina Piller in March 2017. She was named by AZCentral.com as one of the “Ten Most Intriguing High School Athletes of 2017”.

In May 2018, Bockerstette signed a letter of intent to play golf at Paradise Valley Community College in Phoenix, Arizona. She studied dance at PVCC and played on a full golf scholarship, completing her college career in May 2022. She was afforded two one-year golf scholarship extensions due to COVID-19.

Bockerstette is a Special Olympics athlete in golf, swimming and volleyball and plays Challenger baseball. She also plays piano.

Bockerstette and her family launched a 501 nonprofit corporation, the I GOT THIS Foundation, at her 21st birthday party in October 2019. The foundation’s mission is to promote golf instruction and playing opportunities for people with Down syndrome and other intellectual disabilities.

On April 29, 2022, Bockerstette was named as one of the 48 Most Intriguing Women of Arizona by 48 Arizona Women and the Arizona Historical Society. She is featured in a coffee table book entitled: Arizona’s 48 Most Intriguing Women—A New Decade, telling each woman’s story in words and photos. Honorees were selected from 15 cities across Arizona.

On June 6-9, 2022, Bockerstette competed at the 2022 Special Olympics USA Games in Orlando Florida in the Level 5 category, 18 holes individual golf competition, at Orange National Golf Center, where she won a Silver medal.

Bockerstette continues to represent the I Got This Foundation, as a speaker and by attending various charity golf tournaments and fundraising events, where she advocates for inclusion and for people with disabilities.

Summary

These 4 individuals are examples of people who “took advantage of their strengths” so they could fulfill their dreams. So the next time you try to tell yourself, “I cannot do X” just read these famous athlete’s stories (and many more like them). Then find your own strength, so you can take advantage of it to be the best you can be.