Mind over matter: The Path to the Paris 2024 Paralympics as a Blind Swimmer!

Show Notes:

Evan Wilkerson: A Rising Star in 2024 Paralympics Swimming

In a recent interview, 17-year-old Evan Wilkerson shared his inspiring journey towards the 2024 Paralympics in Paris. Despite being visually impaired, Evan has excelled in swimming, showcasing remarkable determination and talent.

Hailing from Wake Forest, North Carolina, Evan began his swimming career at the age of six and is now a member of the New Wave Swim Team in Raleigh. His classification as an S12 swimmer means he competes with other athletes who have moderate visual impairment.

A turning point in Evan’s career came when he qualified for the U.S. Paralympic team after a stellar performance at the Parapan American Games in Santiago, Chile. There, he not only secured a silver medal in the 100-meter backstroke but also surprisingly won bronze in the 100-meter breaststroke, an event he had minimal training for.

Evan’s journey to the 2024 Paralympics in Paris has been marked by intense training and unwavering mental fortitude. He emphasized the crucial role of mental strength in overcoming the physical demands of the sport. His dedication to his craft is evident in his rigorous training schedule, which includes early morning workouts and weightlifting.

As Evan prepares to represent the United States on the world stage, he expressed both excitement and nerves. He shared insights into the training camp he will attend before the Paralympics, highlighting the importance of altitude training for enhancing athletic performance. Evan’s story is a testament to the human spirit and the power of perseverance. His journey is an inspiration to athletes with disabilities and a reminder that with hard work and determination, anything is possible.

🌟Support Evan’s Paralympic Journey: https:/www.givesendgo.com/EvanCompeteswithTeamUSA/donate

📲Follow Evan on Instagram: @newwavewilkerson_evan

💻Resources to Understand Paralympic Swimming Terms:

• Understand the Classes in Paralympic Swim:
  • https://lexi.global/sports/swimming/
• More Class Information from World Para Swimming:
  • https://www.paralympic.org/swimming/classification
• PDF of the Codes of Exception in Paralympic Swimming:
  • https://www.paralympic.org/sites/default/files/document/190213081034051_World%2BPara%2BSwimming%2BCodes%2BOf%2BException.pdf

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Music Used:

“LazyDay” by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Artist: http://audionautix.com/

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Episode #101: Gold Medal Mindset: Blind
Swimmer set to represent USA in 2024 Paralympics

Mind over matter: The Path to the Paris 2024 Paralympics as a Blind Swimmer!

(Recorded July 17, 2024)

Full Transcript of Interview:

Evan: The biggest surprise for training for the Paralympics has really been how mental it all really is.

Tonya: From lane lines to Paris. Take a deep breath and dive into the inspiring story of Evan Wilkerson, a 17-year-old Paralympic swimmer ready to conquer the pool and represent team USA in France.

Evan, welcome to Water Prairie.

Thank you for having me.

Evan, you interviewed with me two years ago during episode 21 in season one, and you shared with us then about having a rare genetic eye condition that’s caused you to lose a lot of your vision. And listeners, if you haven’t seen that interview, be sure to click on the link for episode 21 and watch that one.

He shared a lot during that interview about, uh, the adjustments that he’s made in his training methods as a swimmer. And he also talks a lot about tips on how to get your child started in swimming, especially if they’re visually impaired and if they want to get into competition, what, what they might want to do.

So the link will be in the show notes. You can go back and hear more from that. But I want to catch up, Evan, with where you are now. How old are you? What grade are you in school? Are you still going to the virtual charter school?

Um, I’m 17 now. I’ll actually turn 18 shortly after I get back from Paris, and, uh, I’ll be a senior this year. So that’s kind of exciting. One more year.

Are you making applications to schools yet? Or what are your plans for after graduation?

So not yet. Um, right now my plans are to finish up high school and then I’ll go out to Colorado Springs to go to the Olympic and Paralympic training center. And I’ll live there for a year.

Just because after 12 years of school, I’m kind of done with school, and I want a break. And so I’m just going to go and swim for a year and then I’ll go to college, which I am looking. But, um, finding a college that meets all the requirements that I want in a school is rather difficult, especially. When you want a Christian school that has a swim team, those are a little hard to find.

Do you know what you want to study yet?

More than likely, I’ll study some form of theology. Um, what sort that might be, I don’t really know yet. All I know is Something in that field, I guess. And, um, I want to be a youth pastor and maybe eventually work my way up to being a senior pastor.

That’s what I was going to ask whether you had an area of ministry that the two were, were looking at.

Well, that’s, that’s very exciting. I know you’ve always been in, been very active in your, your youth ministry at your church and awesome. I’m excited to see, see where you’re headed. The last time that we talked about your swimming. I went back and listened to, to the interview this week just to kind of catch up and make sure that I was remembering it correctly.

You had just competed in your first Paralympic meet in Augusta, Georgia, and you had been to Colorado and Florida for national swim meets. And so during that interview at the end, you shared some of the goals that you were working toward. I don’t, I don’t know if you remember, or if you’ve, if you’ve listened to it yourself lately, but one of your goals was to meet the emerging times that you needed to get to the higher training level. How long did it take before you met those emerging times?

It was actually very soon after we did that interview. We had the 2022 National Championships in Charlotte. And so I went down there with one of my coaches, the head coach of my club team came down there with me and, um, a couple of my friends came down as well and had a great meet and got one emerging time standard, and then I ended up getting, uh, two more in April of 23.

Listeners, Evan has been breaking personal best times since we met him last. It’s been almost every time that I see you swimming in another meet, you’re hitting another personal best, um, which has been really exciting to see, to see breaking out and just really going. In fact, I think you just met another one. Is that correct?

Yes, I just actually met, uh, three more. Um, if you want to get technical, it’s technically five more. Um, since it was a prelims and finals meet, but I only swam three events. Um, those events were a hundred backstroke, a hundred freestyle and a hundred butterfly.

And I ended up having best times in all of those every single time I swam, um, except for one time in the hundred free.

So the emerging times you hit right away, when did you, now let’s see, you Paralympic swim meet, but was that a. junior level. What was it before we met the last time?

So before we met the last time, it was mostly what we call open series meets, which is all U.

S. Athletes. There’s no time standards that you have to have to enter. Um, you basically enter, show up and swim. The only thing you have to have is a national classification. I had been to one World Series meet before then. I can’t even remember when that was. All I know was it was before we did our first interview, but, um, that was a pretty small World Series meet.

And that basically just means that other countries can enter and there are. Time standards, I think, but I’m not sure. Um, but that was a good experience to at least see a couple other international swimmers.

Was it listeners in the last two years, Evan’s been able to travel a little bit more. So you made the men’s U S team, correct?

Yes, I did. Last year. It was last November. Yes. Um, we went down to Santiago, Chile for the Parapan American games. And first event was 100 backstroke, which is my best event. It’s great. 100 back is the first event of the meet. And, um, I ended up dropping about two seconds and getting a spot on the national C team.

So C team. So is there an A, B, and C?

Yes. Um, I’m currently on B I’m very close to a,

and then, um, Chile, you meddled there, didn’t you?

Yes. I got a silver medal in the 100 backstroke. And then somehow, I don’t know how this happened. I’m not a breast stroker, . Um, I got bronze in the a hundred breaststroke, um, which I still don’t even know how that happened because before that me, I had trained no breaststroke, my breaststroke training, even if I did train, it usually consisted of a hundred with a 50 kick and a 50 swim.

So there was. Almost no training going into that.

So, yeah, because your, your events are the other three, right?

Yes. Um, 100 free, 100 back and 100 fly.

So how did you even get into that, that heat?

Basically, what happened was a lot of us as S12s, we will swim up to S13s. And so what that means is, um, as an S 12, we’re kind of in the middle of S 11 and S 13.

Um, S 13s tend to have a lot more vision than us. Almost every single 12 who went to that meet did, was we swam up, we had good enough times where we could swim as S 13s. Even though we were technically still 12s. And be able to race in that heat.

Listeners. We’re going to be talking about the, the, the S 12 as 13 that he’s referring to in a few minutes.

So, um, so stick, stick with us and, and you will learn more about that in just a minute. So having, first of all, congratulations on qualifying for the Paralympics in Paris. I mean, those who clicked on this, they’ve already seen the title. They know that the surprise is that you did make the team, but I want to find out a little bit more about that.

You were swimming. Um, back, butterfly and free, right? Yes. Okay. And did you qualify for all three strokes?

Yes, I did end up dropping a whole lot of time and qualifying for all three.

Nice. Nice. Let’s talk a little bit about the team itself. So, um, so in looking at the US. Paralympics team that’s going to Paris.

So that’s because, because I know you, you swim in a lot, a lot of different teams with, with different groups, but the thinking of the, of that team, do you know how many swimmers are on the team?

Yes, there’s 33 total. Um, there’s 12 men and 21 women.

Wow. Why, why so many more women than men?

It’s complicated.

The way that slots are assigned for swimmers is in total, there are 650 available slots for both men and women. So in total, it’d be 1, 300. So how those are allocated is if you have four swimmers in the top eight, that gets us four slots. And then if we have nine swimmers from ninth place to 16th place, that gets us another 4.

5 slots. And then anything below that counts as 0. 2 of a slot. So. We ended up getting 12 men’s slots and 21 women, just because one, we have a lot more women swimmers than men. And two, the women swimmers we do have are placed, um, generally a little bit higher than some of the men we have.

When you’re talking about how they’re placing, that’s,

That’s their world ranking.

What is your current world ranking?

Uh, sixth in the hundred back.

Wow. That’s impressive.

Thank you. It’s, it’s been a lot of work.

So you’re sixth in the world. Is that, but you’re on the B team?

Yes, that’s correct.

How many men are on the A team right now?

We have exactly two men on the A team right now.

Oh, okay. Okay, so it’s not like there’s 20 men ahead of you.

No, no, no, no. Um, the way that works is the national A team time standard is the same as third in the world’s time in each event. So, basically, you almost have to be top three in the world to be on the A team.

So, of the group that’s going, you have members that are A, B, and C?

Yes, we have members from all three teams.

Of the group that’s going, what is the age range? Like, who’s, who, who, or how young is the youngest swimmer?

We have me as the youngest, and I’m 17, um, and then we have people going all the way up to mid 30s.

You told us that the three events that you’re qualified for, will you be able to be part of a relay team as well? Or do you know that yet?

Yes, we will for the first time in eight years have a VI relay at the Paralympic Games. And we’re going to do the 400 freestyle. So we each swim 100 meters of freestyle, which that’s going to be, a rough day because that’s the same day as the individual 100 meter freestyle. So, um, that’s going to be a whole lot of freestyle.

Yeah. But you, you do more than that in practice

all the time. Yes.

You reference the S 12 S 13. Can you explain the disability categories for athletes in the Paralympics? Not just the swimmers, but, um, but the other category too. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yes. So. For other sports, it’s a little different.

Um, especially when you get into things like wheelchair basketball, where you’re only going to have people in wheelchairs or goalball where you have to be blind. Um, but for swimming, we have S1 through S14. So, S1 through S10 are your physical disabilities. Um, so amputees, viralysis, anything that physically impacts your body.

11 through 13 are your visual. So, 11 is the lowest and 13 is the highest. So, if you’re an 11, you have to wear blackout goggles to kind of even the playing field because How the 11s work is they have light perception all the way down to total blindness. And so someone with light perception is going to have a little bit of an advantage over someone who’s totally blind.

And so they all just S12 is what I am currently, uh, more than likely I’ll end up being moved to an 11 at some point in the future. But for 12, we swim with regular clear goggles, um, and tappers are optional for 11s that are required. And then 13s are more your low vision. Um, which that can be. A little shaky, depending on your classifying panel.

Um, if you’re because you can be borderline, like, you could be a borderline 13, kind of teetering on the edge of a 12 or, you know, we’ve had situations where someone’s been a 13 for a long time. And something happens, and they end up getting classed out of Paris sport, because. Either the panel things they can see too much, or they somehow gain vision.

Um, and then as 14 is. More of your intellectual disabilities. Um, I’m not super familiar with what disabilities are going to make up the S14 category, but, um, there are like some mild. Um,

I’m, I’m looking at the world pair swimming website as you’re talking through these and listeners, those on the, on the YouTube video, I’m going to put a link in the show notes to the, the page that I’m looking at now that gives you more detail about each of the different, um, classes.

And I’m also going to put in a link to the codes of exception, and we’re going to talk about that in just a minute, but Evan, I’m looking at this and it has like under the vision impairment. Classes. It has S and sb. What is sb?

Under each classification, there’s S, S, B, and sm. So S is your regular. Um, that just covers fly back and free.

SB is for breaststroke and then SM is for individual medley. And basically what that’s for is for the VI classifications, it’s not going to affect too much. But for other classes, especially the physical classes, Um, breaststroke has a much more different movement than any other stroke, especially in the legs, and so a lot of the times, if you’re, say, an S9, you might be an SB8, just because of the movement of breaststroke might make your disability more pronounced, and so they might move you down just for that one event.

And it’s the same for SM because Medley contains breaststroke. Uh, but that’s not always the case. It just depends on how severe it is and kind of how you deal with it with the, uh, event that contains all four strokes.

The exceptions that I was talking about, you’ve mentioned the tappers. What are some of the other exceptions that we might see in the VI Paralympics?

So specifically for VI, the only exceptions we really get are, we have a guide when we’re going up to the blocks. Um, that guide is oftentimes the same person as who our tapper is. And then for relay starts, we’ll have a starter, um, and they just hold our ankle and they just let go when we’re supposed to go.

When you’re in Paris, who’s going to be tapping for you?

When I’m at an international competition like that. Um, so that’s of course your Paralympic games, your Parapan American games. World championships, Pan Pacific games, all that kind of big stuff. Um, you can’t provide your own tappers. And so the team has a whole bunch of coaches.

They travel with us. Um, they work with us, they train us, and then they also serve as our assists while we’re at a meet. Um, so for me, of course, that’s tapping. And what I’ll do is, um, I’ll meet with a lot of the coaches. They’ll try tapping me because a lot of the times you’ll get people who you really, really like it when they tap you because they do it just right.

And it feels great. And then you’ll have some people where you’re like, Oh my gosh, please don’t tap me in a race. That was bad.

Well, I was thinking about that. It could make, it could make or break a competition if you have the wrong tapping.

Right. And it often does. And so what I’ll do is I’ll go through all the coaches.

They’ll try tapping me. And then since I’m the only S12 going also, I’ll get first pick among the tappers, um, for my event. And there are 2 or 3 people who have tapped for me before that. I know are going. Um, and so that makes the process a little bit easier because I know these people, they know me. Uh, we’ve worked together a bunch before. So that’s. It makes the process go a little smoother.

When do you leave to go to the training center?

I actually leave this Sunday. So that’s really exciting. Um, also very hectic trying to pack everything I’m going to need for three or so weeks. And hoping I don’t forget anything.

When you leave on Sunday, will you be back again? Or will you go straight to Paris from there?

I will be back again, just to see family, see friends, all that kind of good stuff. Repack and then we go to Germany for. Time zone, acclimation and training. And then from Germany, we go directly to Paris

. So you have enough some time there before going while you’re at the training center. Do you know what the schedule will be while you’re there?

I’m going to be in the pool six days a week, and then wait. Training times are pretty much just up to me. The rest of it is very up in the air. And it kind of depends on what I do, what I opt into, what I opt out of. And then if there’s any appointments that I want to do, because they.

They will provide basically any sort of sports medicine that we want, um, massages, chiropractics, anything like that.

Are you going to be traveling on your own or is anyone from the family going with you until you get checked in?

No, I’ll travel on my own. For most of this process, actually, um, my family will come to Paris, but I’ll already be there.

I know you’re excited about going. Are you nervous about going at all? How are you feeling?

I am a little bit, um, just because it’s not every day that you get up and, you know, you race people who are first, second and third in the world on international television and really hope you don’t screw up. But as far as the actual swims go, you know, I’ve kind of conditioned myself.

You know, it’s just another swimming, swimming is my job. It’s just another day in the office, just on a bigger stage.

Um, I mean, you’re, you’re talking about wanting to do this for, for a year after you finished high school. So yeah, this is, this, this is your, your, your chance to not just shine, but. Just to give this a try and you know, what, decide what role this is going to play for the rest of your life, right?

When I was your age, if I were about to head off for three weeks, that’s like going to camp for three weeks. So a lot of fun will be there. You’re and, and you’re going to be in what my son always calls us happy place with baseball. You’re going to be in your happy place in the pool with like minded individuals,

Right. Right.

The support of the trainers there, Is probably gonna be more than what you’ve maybe seen before. I don’t know if you’ve been in that environment before.

I have, um, I’ve actually been up there several times before, um, for about a week, each time they try to get the national team up there a little bit, just because one, the altitude is so high, it’s about six ish thousand feet, give or take.

Um, and when your body’s at altitude, it’ll do some strange things that are very helpful when you come back down from altitude and, um, it’ll give you more endurance. It’ll strengthen your cardiovascular system. Um, even more red blood cells. Lots of really good stuff. That’s really helpful for especially me, like Paris, where you want to be your best, it’s good to train at a higher altitude first.

I’m going to transition. Now, each of my guests, the season have been giving some advice to our listeners by finishing some open ended statements. The first one that I have for you is the biggest surprise about training for the pair Olympics has been…

The biggest surprise for training for the Paralympics has really been how mental it all really is.

You know, when you think of sports, a lot of people, especially spectators, nothing against you spectators, just saying, um, a lot of you guys see the physical part of it. Um, and a lot of it is mental. I tell a lot of people swimming is about 2 percent physical and 98 percent mental. Um, it’s hard to get up at 4 30 in the morning in the summer to go train and then to come back home and lift weights.

and repeat for months. Um, but really it’s not physical. It’s mental because it would be very easy to lay in my nice warm bed. Even though I’m not really tired, I have plenty of sleep. Um, but you don’t want to get up that early. Um, and go jump in a cold pool or a very hot pool, depending on where we’re swimming and work because a lot of us just want comfort.

Um, and so that was a bit of a big surprise to me, especially in the last couple of years. I’ve started figuring out, Hey, this whole thing is just a mind game. If I just play the mind game, we’re good. We’re going to make progress.

So the next one I have for you is the most important thing I’ve learned about myself throughout this journey is…

The most important thing I’ve learned about myself throughout this journey is I can take a lot more than I think I can. And that’s really important, especially from just from a swimming standpoint and also from a life standpoint, um, from a swimming standpoint, it’s more of going out fast as hard and you don’t want to do it, um, because you don’t think you’re capable of doing it right.

But in life it’s the same thing. You know, you don’t want to do. Such and such task or go to this job interview or be on a podcast or anything like that, because, you know, a lot of us just think we’re not really qualified to do it, or we have what’s called imposter syndrome. And I’ve really learned about myself is.

You know, it doesn’t matter what my mind says. If I think I can do it, I should just do it. And even if I think I can’t do it, I should just do it because what’s the worst that can happen.

Right. If you, if you don’t shoot for something, you’re never going to reach it. Right.

Right.

And along that same line. If I could go back and tell my younger self one thing about pursuing swimming, it would be…

If I could go back and tell my younger self one thing about pursuing swimming, it would definitely be to start waking up early and training more because really, in the past couple of years has been the only time.

Well, not the only time, but my training load has gone up a lot, um, mostly because I’ve started figuring out ways to kind of cheat the system, um, ways to add more time to my day. And, you know, if I could go back and tell my younger self, hey, you need to start getting up earlier, especially when you’re in school and you need to go lift weights.

And then you need to do school and then you need to go swim and then you need to come home and then stretch and then do it all over again. Um, that’s really important. And even in the summer, it’s kind of reversed. I get up, I go swim, I come home. I do whatever has to be done that day. I work out, I stretch, I repeat.

Um, So I think I’d really just tell my younger self, get up early, start the day. Um, don’t be slack and just do the work.

So the final one is success for me. Isn’t just about winning medals. It’s also about…

Success for me. Isn’t just about winning medals. It’s also about. The experience and kind of being up on the world’s largest stage and being able to represent my country, uh, to the best of my ability and to go out there and really just see what happens.

And it’s also about kind of, I guess, trying to spread a little bit of my mentality of, if you can think about it, you can do it. So, you know, get out there and do it and don’t quit when it gets hard. That’s really important to me. That’s kind of what’s got me through a little bit. And also, I guess just to be able to represent God as well, because he’s the one who’s put me in this situation.

Um, I could not have done a lot of this on my own.

Before we go, share with us your social media so that those that are listening and want to follow your journey can, can know, cause I know you’re on Instagram. Is that your main social media?

The main way. For me is Instagram. Um, it’s new wave, Wilkerson underscore Evan.

Um, all that’s one word except for the underscore. Um, and it should pop right up.

I’ll put that, that link as well in the show notes for, for those who want to follow you, cause I know you’re, you’re, you’re really good about posting things. As you’re going.

Yes. I try to always post whenever I’m traveling or. If there’s some terribly hard set we do in practice, a lot of the times I’ll throw it up on my story and, um, I try to stay connected to the people out there.

A couple other questions I had for you. You said your family’s going to be able to go to Paris. So is everyone going?

My mom, my dad, my sister, and my grandma, which is my mom’s mom. They’re all going to go. Um, so that’s really exciting. Uh, it’ll be good to have all of them there.

Will you check in with us while you’re training so we can, can update our listeners on what’s going on while you’re during your training and while you’re in Paris?

Absolutely. I’ll be posting while I’m training. Um, posting in Paris, posting after Paris, posting in Germany. Um, so I can send you those, I can send you extra stuff.

And then whenever you get back, let’s see if we can, can have you come back in and give us an update on how everything turned out. Of course, everyone’s gonna be watching you anyway, but I know they’re going to want to hear that.

Um, the other thing I wanted to say to listeners. Evan and I were chatting before we started recording. He is open to speaking publicly about his experiences. So, um, so connect with him if that’s something of interest to your organization. If you have a group that, that you’d like to have him share what he’s learned and what his journey has been after he gets back.

Yes. If you want to reach out now and schedule something, reach out after. Um, it’s all the same.

And if you’re hearing this later, after everything is said and done, um, always a good, a good topic to have a young adult come out and be able to talk about something like this. So, um, So, yeah, so that’s, that’s nothing I’m, I’m, I’m hoping will work out for you.

Well, Evan, thank you for coming back in. I’m very excited for you and we’re going to be cheering for you.

Thank you. Thank you for having me on again. It’s been great to be able to reach out and try to give back a little bit. To the disability community,

Evan’s story is a powerful reminder that anything is possible with dedication and a positive attitude.

As Evan prepares to take on the world stage in Paris, there’s one way you can be a part of his incredible journey. Evan’s family is working hard to cover the cost of training and travel to Paris to cheer him on. A family friend has set up a fundraising page to help ease the financial burden. If you were inspired by Evan story and want to support his Paralympic dream, please visit the link in the description below.

Every contribution, big or small, makes a difference. Thanks again to Evan for joining us today on the Water Prairie Chronicles. We wish him all the best in Paris. Don’t forget to subscribe for more inspiring interviews and I’ll see you next time.