Paralympic Preview

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Paralympic Preview:
U.S. Wheelers Push Toward The Paralympics

by Laura Kaminker

In October, 4,000 athletes from 125 countries will converge on Sydney, Australia, to compete in 18 sports at the 2000 Paralympics. Here are four American wheelers who hope to make a strong showing.

Pressing to Win

Wayne Romero

In 1996 Wayne Romero narrowly missed the final cut for the U.S. Paralympic rugby team, and being named first alternate wasn't much consolation. Two years later he tried out for the U.S. World Games team, with the same disappointing result.

Soon after, when several members of his Tennessee Quad Crushers retired, Romero and a few teammates joined the Lakeshore Demolition team, hoping to stay competitive. During the next two years, Romero helped the Demolition to consecutive national championships and now, at 39, he's finally getting a shot at international competition. In October Romero will fly to Sydney as a member of the U.S. rugby team.

Twice a week, Romero makes the five-hour round-trip between Lewisburg, Tenn., and Birmingham, Ala., rolling into work a little bleary after each weekday practice. But Romero needs rugby. Before becoming an incomplete C6-8 quad in a car accident, he played football and raced motocross. Post-injury, he needed something to give him the rough-and-tumble contact he craved.

Rugby was the obvious choice. Romero says nondisabled friends are invariably surprised at how hard-hitting and aggressive the games are. When he first started playing, he says, "there was a lot more sitting in the box, waiting for someone to score. Nowadays, if you're not pressing, you're not winning." With the Crushers, the 1994 champions, Romero helped initiate that change. "It's pretty cool to see the game evolve around something you've had a part in," he says proudly.

He has a lot to be proud of. Since he and his wife separated in 1992, Romero has raised his son David on his own, completed his associate's degree in engineering--he's now working on his bachelor's--and developed a career designing air-conditioning and heating systems. Romero and his ex-wife remain good friends, and David, 18, purportedly still lives with his dad.

"I know that he's here cause I see little trails of stuff he's left behind," laughs Romero.

Internationally, Romero's game is called wheelchair rugby; in the Paralympics, it's just plain rugby. But in the U.S. it's quad rugby--emphasis on the quad. Romero feels the sport's fierce camaraderie can be an important resource for newly injured quads.

"When we first started our team," he says, "most of us thought a .5 [the classification corresponding to the highest level of injury] couldn't do much of anything. Then you meet a .5 who plays hard and contributes a lot to the game. You get a lot of different ideas of how other people do things. You learn more about how to invent yourself, how to do the things you want to do."

Her Own Thing

Amie Stanton was 11 years old when she joined the Great Lakes Adaptive Sports Association and discovered her own athleticism. Program director Cindy Housner recalls, "Whatever sport Amie tried, she excelled at it and made it look easy." Amie was eager to try every sport but one--she refused to go anywhere near a racing chair.

Amie Stanton

"I thought it was stupid to get yourself all crouched down like that," Stanton remembers. "It looked ridiculous." But Housner persuaded her to try it, and a racer was born.

Since then Stanton, 17, has torn up the junior circuit and tested her skills against the women's field in most of the major road races. She still plays wheelchair basketball on Great Lakes' junior team, and Housner says she's a role model for the younger kids. A social creature with plenty of friends, Stanton isn't the type to wear blinders and train obsessively. But make no mistake, says Housner, "Amie doesn't like to lose."

Last year Stanton had the opportunity to train with marathoner Jean Driscoll. Like Driscoll, Stanton is a Wisconsin native living in Illinois. And like Driscoll, Stanton was introduced to wheelchair sports by Cindy Housner. Driscoll thinks Stanton has all the attributes of a serious contender. "She has long arms and quick hands," she says. "If she sticks with it and continues to train, she'll be very, very good."

Stanton has heard horror stories from young racers who've had to battle their schools to take gym class. But although Stanton, who has been paraplegic since age 2, has always been the only wheelchair user in her school, she is welcomed to P.E. with open arms and has been invited to join the track team. (She declined, but does use the school's track and weight room for training.)

"My school has been awesome," Stanton says, mentioning that they publicize her racing results. "Kids ask me, 'How's your racing going?' They don't understand how competitive it is. But that's OK, they don't have to understand. It's my own thing."

Stanton first competed in the Junior Nationals in 1995, but it was in 1997, when she was invited to the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, Calif., that she got serious about her times. "I saw how hard everyone worked, how devoted they were to their training," she says. "It was a whole different atmosphere, and I wanted to be part of it. That's when I got my butt in gear."

It worked in a big way. At the 1998 World Games in England, Stanton won the 400 meter, placed second in the 200 and third in the 100. In 1999, she won every race in her division in both the Junior Nationals and the Junior World Games. Now she's gunning for a spot on the U.S. team.

"I definitely want to go," she says. "I'm going to work hard, but I don't want to get my hopes too high. If I don't make it, I figure, I'm young and I have time." But the thought of competing in the Olympic 800-meter exhibition race leaves Stanton breathless. "I wouldn't even care how I did. Just being there would be the best experience ever."

Down to Business

When Hope Lewellen represented the U.S. in tennis in the 1996 Atlanta Paralympics, she was pretty relaxed about it. "It was amazing just to be there," she says. "I had a blast."

Hope Lewellen

This time around, though, it's different. "People say, 'It's so cool you're going to Australia,' but I don't plan on doing any sightseeing. It's all down to business for Sydney."

Lewellen's game reflects that change of attitude. In Atlanta she won the silver in doubles, but got knocked out in the first round of singles. "I got by on sheer athleticism," she says. "I was a good athlete who could chase down the balls." Since then tennis has become the focus of Lewellen's life. She's been gradually relocating from Chicago to Boca Raton, Fla., to work with her coach, David Crowe, along with a personal trainer, a yoga instructor, a massage therapist and a contingent of men to play in practice matches. She's on the tour circuit for months at a time, playing as many as 16 tournaments a year. "My level of play is rising," says Lewellen. "I can feel the difference with every tournament."

Though she's played about every sport you can name, Lewellen says tennis is by far the most challenging overall. "After matches," she says, "I'm much more mentally exhausted than physically. You're out there alone. You can't pass the ball off, you can't say, if that person had made a better throw ... . It's all on you."

As much as she loves playing, Lewellen is discontent with the invisibility of her sport. She hopes some tennis star will appreciate the wheelchair game enough to bring it into the limelight--and the money.

Lewellen has played a fundraiser with Billie Jean King and regards the Nashville fundraiser where she played in front of, then met, Martina Navratilova as the highlight of her career. "It was incredible to look over in the stands, and there was Martina watching me play, yelling out, 'Nice shot!'"

Lewellen was working as an airplane mechanic when the nose wheels of a 767 ran over her legs in 1989. Extensive surgery saved her left leg, but the right was beyond repair. At the age of 22, her fast-pitch softball game--a big part of her life since grade school--was over, but she did return to her job.

"I needed to do it," Lewellen says. "There were many reasons, but the biggest one was to prove that I could." Then she found wheelchair tennis, and her job was history. "It was interfering with my game!" she says, laughing. "But I made my point. When I left, it was on my own terms."

Resuming work brought more than psychic satisfaction. "I had been having a really difficult time with my prosthesis," she says, "but I couldn't do my job in my wheelchair or on crutches. Working forced me to become good on my leg." Now, to reduce wear on her shoulders and elbows, Lewellen includes the treadmill in her training regimen--hoping to avoid the injuries so common in wheelchair sports. And though she doesn't use a chair full time, she's very confident of her chair-handling skills.

"I definitely feel I have the best of both worlds," she says. "I feel very, very lucky."

A More Balanced View

Dan Byrnes, head coach of the U.S. Paralympic basketball team, calls Paul Schulte "one of the most gifted players in the world" and "one of the classiest players I've worked with in 23 years of coaching." But Byrnes, who coached the 21-year-old guard from the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) on the championship 1998 U.S. Gold Cup team, insists that Schulte's greatest value to any team is his character and outstanding work ethic. With Paralympic gold at stake, Schulte is working hard to live up to his burgeoning reputation.

Paul Schulte

Schulte was a sports-obsessed kid, focusing in turns on baseball, football and basketball. After becoming paraplegic in a car accident the day after his 10th birthday, Schulte, like a lot of newly injured athletes, imagined wheelchair sports would be boring and noncompetitive. But it never occurred to him to give up sports.

"If my able-bodied friends were doing something, I tried it," he says. "I pushed myself as much as I possibly could." By the time he hooked up with a wheelchair basketball team at age 14, Schulte was already fast and strong.

And what a team to find! Schulte, from Manchester, Mich., had stumbled upon the Ann Arbor Thunderbirds. Many Hall of Famers have come out of the Ann Arbor-Detroit-Toledo area, and in 1994 several of them, including Darryl "Tree" Waller and Maurice "Mo" Phillips, were getting together as the Thunderbirds. With decades of national and international experience among them, they took Schulte under their collective wing.

Playing with men twice his age, and being the gung-ho kid that he was, Schulte's talents blossomed. By the time he was spotted by the Grand Rapid Junior Pacers, he was a hot prospect. In Schulte's first year with the Pacers the team finished ninth in the National Tournament; his second year, they won. When Schulte learned there were college scholarships available for wheelchair basketball, his grades skyrocketed. "I went from a 2.0 student to a 3.5 my senior year," he says.

In 1996 the Junior Pacers made it to the championship game, but lost to a team from Arkansas; the tournament MVP was a young man named Eddie McGee. The following year, Schulte's senior year of high school, his Pacers won the title and Schulte was MVP. McGee and Schulte, now great friends, accepted scholarships from UTA, became roommates, and together battled their collegiate-division rivals, the University of Illinois.

As much as he wants to win a gold medal in Sydney, Schulte no longer considers himself a sports fanatic.

"I used to be the typical bloodthirsty jock--winning was all that mattered," he says. These days, though, Schulte names his "future family" as his highest priority; right now that means himself and his fiancee, Meghan Greenwald. The couple started dating their senior year of high school; after two years of doing the long-distance thing, Greenwald transferred from Michigan State to UTA.

Playing on a national team, where former competitors must work together as teammates, has given Schulte a more mature perspective on his game.

"Winning the '98 Gold Cup but losing the collegiate championship made me take a more balanced view," he says. "My goal is always to win, but half the fun is just being with the guys--playing well and playing together."

Access Guides A Wheely Good Access Guide to Sydney, Australia Megan Harper's guidebook has the great virtue of brevity. And although it wasn't written specifically for the Paralympics, it might as well have been. Anyone who uses a wheelchair and plans to visit Sydney--before, during or after the Paralympics--should find it useful. Included are all access essentials for public transportation, beaches, parks, shopping centers, markets, theaters and other tourist attractions. Hotels are listed, and readers will be gratified to learn that many have "hobless showers." Restaurants are sensibly categorized as "BYO" or "licensed." Maps are included. For your copy, send check or money order for US$21 (AUD$32) to Megan Harper, P.O. Box 1755, Lane Cove 2066, Sydney, Australia. The cost of shipping to anywhere in the world is included. The Wheelie's Handbook of Australia Here's a guidebook for the entire country written by Colin James. You can check out the book's contents and order it at James' Web site. For mail orders, it's available for AU$35.25 from Colin James, 3 Furner Ave., Bell Park, Victoria 3215, Australia.

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