Wheelchair Racer Sues for HS Track Inclusion

dean moriarty · 2007-04-12T10:39:54-04:00

Discuss. In Maryland, a Fight to the Finish Line Wheelchair Racer's Quest for Inclusion Spurs Debate By Eli Saslow Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, April 12, 2007; Page A01 Tatyana McFadden has spent the last two years fighting for inclusion. The 17-year-old Paralympic wheelchair racer wants a chance, she said, to compete like anybody else: alongside able-bodied teammates, with results that count for Atholton High School's track and field team. And now, after so much work, she feels more ostracized than ever before. What began as a disabled athlete's hopeful journey to break down barriers has evolved into an unsentimental debate about whether all barriers need to be broken down. McFadden considers her equal participation a civil right; many track athletes and coaches consider it an unnecessary threat to the integrity of their sport. In March, McFadden filed a federal lawsuit demanding that the state of Maryland treat her the same as all athletes at the state track and field championships -- her second lawsuit in a year. In doing so, she has forced Maryland to consider how to best combine wheelchair races and runners, a dilemma that thousands of road races face each year. McFadden's court date has yet to be determined, but Maryland's track community already has rendered its verdict. Teammates worry about safety while running on the track while McFadden is racing, reaching speeds up to 20 mph. Competitors think Atholton, a public school in Columbia, will dominate meets because of the points the high school junior would earn by racing in a wheelchair division that consists of only herself. On Internet message boards and in private conversations, runners pose various forms of the same question: For McFadden, who won two medals at the 2004 Paralympics in Athens and continues to travel the world to compete, is a spot on the high school track team worth this much tumult? In the last few months, McFadden has asked that question herself. Wheelchair racers herald her as a pioneer for disabled rights. Still, McFadden feels nauseated before meets, worried that the crowd might boo when she wheels to the starting line. Deborah McFadden, her mother, fears a runner might stage a collision to further vilify her daughter. "There are definitely times when I've considered just quitting," Tatyana McFadden said. "But that's what they want, and I kind of want to stick it back to them. Like: 'I'm going to be here. You're going to see me every day. I'm going to be at meets. And I just don't care what you think.' " McFadden hardened her resolve during two years of controversy. When she arrived at the track orientation meeting in the spring of her freshman year, coaches initially refused to give her a jersey. McFadden spent three days hassling the coaches. She understood why disabled athletes couldn't compete on swimming and basketball teams. But why couldn't a wheelchair racer roll next to a sprinter? "Just give her the jersey," Deborah McFadden told the Atholton coaches. "That's probably all she wants." But over the next two seasons, McFadden continued to force entry into the track community. She traveled to meets, even when uninvited. She wheeled around the track alone, between events, in what Howard County called exhibition races. She raced in the lane next to runners, even though nobody recorded her time. She won a lawsuit last year, forcing Howard County to include a wheelchair division in its meets and award Atholton points for McFadden's wins. In some sense, McFadden considers her most recent lawsuit a victory in itself: She finally has reached the last impediment, she said. She wants the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association to count her wheelchair racing results in region and state meets toward the overall team competition. The MPSSAA contends that it already has exceeded its obligations by adding eight nonscoring wheelchair events to this year's track championships. McFadden's attorney, Lauren Young, hopes to hear a verdict before the state meet begins at Morgan State University in Baltimore on May 24. "Because of Tatyana, the state has taken some steps forward, but not the right steps," said Young, who works for the Maryland Disability Law Center. "If you're a person of value, that means you should count to the team score. I don't see any way around that. We don't think kids who use wheelchairs should be set aside and told they don't matter." McFadden was born with spina bifida, which paralyzed her from the waist down. She was abandoned at birth and left at a Russian orphanage that didn't have a wheelchair for her to use. Deborah McFadden, visiting St. Petersburg for a few weeks, saw Tatyana scooting across the floor of her orphanage and decided to adopt the girl. After almost two years of paperwork, she returned to Maryland with a 6-year-old, malnourished daughter who didn't speak English. In her first years in the United States, McFadden relied on sports to fortify her health and refine her social skills. When kids in the neighborhood would skip rope, she would join in, jumping from a handstand position. She signed up for lessons in swimming and gymnastics. By the time she entered high school, she had won two medals in the 2004 Paralympics in Athens. She had competed for wheelchair championships in table tennis, skiing, ice hockey and basketball. So when her grandparents asked her if she had a plan for how to best make friends in high school? No problem, McFadden said. She'd just hang out with the jocks. A Question of Fairness -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As senior captain of the Atholton track team in 2006, Marquel Bowler heard other runners taunt Atholton as cheaters during the regular season because of the points it earned thanks to the girl in the wheelchair. She saw her father, Dwight, the Atholton head coach, come home from practices so frustrated by the nonstop, McFadden-related publicity that he talked wistfully about leaving the job. And she watched, horrified, as her school lost its state title because of a pacing violation against McFadden. Through it all, Bowler kept her mouth shut. But this year, after Atholton's athletes attended a prestigious awards banquet only to accept an honor intended mainly for McFadden, Bowler decided she had kept quiet long enough. In her dorm room at Elizabethtown College in central Pennsylvania, Bowler wrote a scathing letter to the editor and sent it to a handful of local newspapers. "I will no longer sit back and watch runners be treated unfairly because they are NOT disabled . . ." she wrote. "Politically correct or not, I have been waiting several months to get all this off my chest." In the letter, Bowler presented a multilayered argument for McFadden's exclusion from Maryland races: Running and wheelchair racing are different sports that don't belong on the same track; competing with McFadden felt unsafe; McFadden had tarnished the sport and distracted her teammates for the sake of more publicity. Most disappointing, Bowler said, was that McFadden's mere participation in the 2006 2A state championship meet had resulted in disaster. She rolled next to runners in the 1,600-meter race and encouraged Atholton's Alison Smith, unintentionally committing a pacing violation that negated Smith's first-place finish and Atholton's state title. "I didn't want to come off as the girl who hated the girl in the wheelchair," Bowler said this week. "But the truth is these are just things that somebody needed to say no matter what. I was always worried it would make people hate me." Instead, it made Bowler a hero to most able-bodied runners. At Mdrunning.net, a popular Internet site that features a chat forum and message boards, Bowler's letter -- especially when combined with McFadden's decision to file another lawsuit -- created a frenzy. The board's proprietor, local distance-running guru Brad Jaeger, argued that awarding McFadden points at the state meet would "absolutely ruin the whole sport." Teams usually win the state championship by scoring about 70 points in the state meet, Jaeger reasoned. So if Maryland awarded McFadden the usual 10 points for first place -- right now, she's only asking for one point -- that would drastically alter the meet. And should McFadden compete in the maximum four events? Atholton virtually would be ensured a state title. In court this month, Maryland hopes to prove that it already has progressed in its treatment of wheelchair racing. For the first time this year, the MPSSAA will offer eight events for wheelchair racers. So far, Maryland has heard of only three athletes -- McFadden and two boys -- who want to compete, said Ned Sparks, the association's executive director. "We have 188 schools, and to our knowledge there's only two schools that have wheelchair racing," Sparks said. "So if we award points to those two teams, how is that fair to everybody else? Even if we only award the winner one point, that could be the difference between which teams win. "There's a lot of logic that goes into this for us. We're not bad villains. And we're certainly not going to start a publicity campaign against a handicapped 17-year-old girl. So a lot of the other side here doesn't get out." 'People Are Going to Hate You' -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When McFadden told her mother last month that she wanted to file a second lawsuit, this time against the state, Deborah asked her to reconsider. "You've already done so much," Deborah McFadden said. "Aren't you tired? You know, people are going to hate you." "I'd rather be on the team and be hated," her daughter said, "than not be on the team at all." Sometimes, to remind herself why she's fighting, McFadden recalls her first meet at Atholton two years ago. She raced the 400 meters in a heat filled with runners. Even though her result didn't count, she came from behind and finished before anyone else. The crowd cheered. Classmates hugged her. On the way home from the meet, McFadden called her grandparents and recounted what she called the best day of her life. "I'd never felt that emotion of being on a school team with all my friends," McFadden said. She's now excluded from those coveted moments of camaraderie. The Atholton team made T-shirts depicting each athlete as a different animal, but the girls never made one for McFadden because, they said, they didn't know her size. After a few awkward exchanges with Dwight Bowler, the Raiders' coach -- they never talked about his daughter's letter -- McFadden stopped practicing with Bowler's distance group and joined the Atholton sprint group. During a recent practice, McFadden sped around the track, her eyes locked on the ground ahead. She circled alone for almost 20 minutes, whizzing by teammates whose own practices unfolded in group drills and jokes. At the end of her workout, McFadden pulled up next to six teenagers who stood near the bleachers. They stared back at her warily. "Anybody want to come around with me?" McFadden asked. Nobody answered. "Fine," McFadden said. "I'll just go again by myself." McFadden spends her free time with school friends who know nothing about track. She vents to elite wheelchair athletes, particularly Scott Hollenbeck, who fought a similar legal battle in Illinois 20 years ago. "I tell her that this is the hardest thing she's ever going to do," Hollenbeck said. "If you think it's awkward being the kid in a wheelchair, it's way more awkward being the person who is off in the corner alone, getting those nasty glares in a locker room. But if not Tatyana, who? And if not now, when?" Still, McFadden sometimes comes home from practice near tears. Last month, she slept "a ton because of being depressed," McFadden said. "Sometimes, other girls are just like, 'Oh my gosh, I hate her so much and blah, blah, blah,' " said Kate Caffrey, a senior distance runner at Atholton. "I just try to avoid her and not to be mean. But we're all thinking the same thing: enough of this Tatyana controversy. We just want to move on and think about something else. It needs to end." It might well end in the courtroom later this month. But in the track community, another theory has gained momentum: McFadden's fight has created so much vitriol, coaches and athletes said, that no judge's verdict will register with finality. "The real resolution is going to come at the state meet," said Jaeger, the host of Mdrunning.net. "If Tatyana gets to race, some coaches have told me they'll pull their athletes right off the track. They'll protest, and Tatyana will race by herself."

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19 years ago 05/15/2007 11:24am EDT

re: googlerific

Finally someone looks at this situation without the using the "politically correct" goggles

19 years ago 05/15/2007 11:30am EDT

re: its about time

she should be allowed to compete, but never on the same track as runners. one, its dangerous to both parties, two, it isn't competitive as she will destroy anyone (except maybe the 100 meters). she shouldn't be fighting to get on the same track as "able bodied athletes" (in my opinion anyone who is winning medals at any olympics is an able bodied athlete) she should be fighting to get more wheelchair only events/wheelchair racers and getting points for those events (i believe getting points for events was one of her lawsuits).

is there a rule that you have to be handicapped to compete in the wheelchair events? i'm sure there HAS to be other high school students who would give it a try (or would that be considered extremely bad by the handicapped racers?). or what about joe and jill jock who twisted an ankle or knee and can't currently compete in their event or sport (lots of leg injuries in football)? couldn't they compete in a wheelchair event, even if for only one season or one meet?

if the wheelchair events allowed "able bodied athletes" to join in and were worth point then i bet she would have racers at every meet and she would be welcomed on her team as she would be the best in the state. seems like her effort could have been better applied towards making these ideas possible rather than trying to be allowed to stomp some "able bodied athletes" into the ground in some races.

furthermore, how many students who are in wheelchairs might now be afraird of stepping up and trying to join the track team due to the negative reaction because of how she is going about this? if she put all of this energy towards reaching out to these hypothetical students and creating place for them to compete rather than trying to compete with "normal" athletes where she has supreme advantage how many more than 2 wheelchair racers would there be in the state?

19 years ago 05/15/2007 11:39am EDT

re: quincy

so, i used to be a college runner (not a great one, of course) before being in a car accident and sustaining a spinal cord injury. now i'm a paraplegic (is it wrong of me to still read letsrun two years after not being able to run anymore?) i don't race at this point, and i agree that this girl shouldn't be allowed to compete on the same level as other high school track athletes - but think about this situation from her perspective for a second.

when she filed the suit she was a 16 year old girl. every 16 year girl wants to fit in and be known for something. she's a high schooler! she's not thinking about fair competition or not, she probably just wants to help her team and make friends. i know she's a paralympian who has competed at the highest levels of her sport, but there still is a sense of wanting to be included with your peers - and not always sent off to meets in another state where there's a handful of disabled athletes (and you have to wait for once a year for really high quality competition).

should kids with disabilities have to wait until they make it to college, and then go to a school like the university of illinois that has a large wheelchair sports program, to be a part of an athletic team comprised of their kids their own age?

19 years ago 05/15/2007 11:45am EDT

re: destroyer of worlds

Some people are just not meant to do certain things.

Should slower runners be given a head start because they are naturally slower than others?

Why does she event want to do this? She would easily win every race.

If i sprain my ankle can I race using a bike?

19 years ago 05/15/2007 12:09pm EDT

re: in a chair

I couldn't agree more. Kids that are different, that aren't attractive etc, are outsiders in a high school. This kid is probably more isolated from her peers than the responders here could imagine.

Physical presence does not mean included. A life of physical challenges compounded by social isolation doesn't make create social causes. Inflexibility and an absence of any understaning of the kid, not the chair leads to lawsutis. I think the coaches and the league could have created a positive outcome by not having here compete, but by having her participate; to matter and to value her athleticism. Instead, it gets turned into a court case, far removed from what the kid probably wants most, a date, a trip to the mall with other kids, to be flirted with.

19 years ago 05/15/2007 6:03pm EDT

re: Boston28

Looks like the the discussion has wound down... oh well...

19 years ago 05/15/2007 6:16pm EDT

re: in a chair

My freshman year there was a wheelchair racer in Iowa who rolled 2:09 for the 800. Sadly, I ran in the JV section of a meet and ran 2:13 and got beat by him.

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Wheelchair Racer Sues for HS Track Inclusion

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