Meet Claire Forrest, a high school swimmer from Minneapolis whose determination has qualified her for an international competition
Claire Forrest is a 15-year-old freshman at Southwest High School in Minneapolis. Like many teens, she keeps busy hanging out with friends and with hobbies like playing the piano and downhill skiing. But most of all, she loves to swim.
While these may seem like average activities for an active kid, for Forrest, they’ve required an intense focus and determination that her swimming coaches say sets her apart from the rest.
Forrest has cerebral palsy, or, as she calls it, “CP.” “When I was born, my brain was damaged, [which] causes tighter muscles,” she explains.
Forrest’s mom, Melinda Benjamin, says her daughter has endured nearly 15 years of constant physical therapy and difficulty learning how to walk. For her part, the driven Forrest said her condition “is no big deal to me.”
Dave Cameron, head coach for the Uptown YWCA’s Otters Swim Team, has been coaching Forrest since fall 2004. He calls Claire “definitely one of the most driven swimmers we’ve got.”
Last summer, Forrest was chosen to attend the Paralympics Academy in Colorado. The annual event brings together kids from across the country to work with professional coaches in clinics and to develop leadership skills. The Paralympic Academy is a program of the United States Paralympics, a division of the U.S. Olympic Committee focused on giving athletes with physical disabilities a chance to compete.
Forrest said that at the academy she met athletes with disabilities who have become successful in their sport, which changed her outlook about her CP.
“I didn’t used to be so open,” she said about discussing her condition. “After the Paralympic Academy, I thought, ‘why have I been hiding for so long?’”
Last fall, Forrest joined the swim team at Southwest. Pam Georgetti, the head coach of the school’s boys’ and girls’ swim teams, said Forrest is an extremely motivated athlete with the right swimming mechanics who never lets her physical limitations dampen her spirit, and she’s also “such a terrific kid.”
Teaching others
While Forrest has grown as a swimmer through this year, her coaches say she’s also helped them to grow as educators and brought the team together.
Georgetti says she told herself, “All right, I’m going to have to learn how to coach someone I’ve never coached [before].”
Cameron says he, too, has learned a lot working with Forrest and that the experience has helped him train others, including a wheelchair triathlete.
“She’s definitely been a role model to a lot of swimmers,” Cameron adds. “The rest of the team gets up and cheers when Claire is swimming.”
Last fall, Forrest achieved her loftiest goal yet: swimming the 50-meter backstroke in 1 minute, 4 seconds, qualifying her for the Paralympics Open Championships in December 2005 at the University of Minnesota Aquatic Center. The international event brought athletes with physical disabilities from around the world to compete.
Despite her talent and international qualifying slot, Forrest said she has no aspirations to be in the Paralympic Games; she hopes to become a writer. She said she concentrates on upcoming meets and her high school career.
“I just like to work hard at something. I’m like everybody else.”
