Double Trojan reignites athletic passions due to Swim with Mike

Olivia Northcutt-Wyly has all the time beloved the pool. Once a aggressive swimmer, she noticed the pool as each a ardour and a secure haven. Swimming structured her days, formed her id and fueled her ambitions. She educated relentlessly, typically a number of instances a day — even leaving faculty noon to apply — competing in high-level meets round her residence state of Texas and the nation.

All of that modified when, at 16, medical doctors identified Northcutt-Wyly with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a bunch of inherited issues that have an effect on connective tissues. In her case, the issues have been accompanied by extra medical circumstances, together with recurring spinal canal cysts and a coronary heart situation that induced fainting. Together, these circumstances eroded her bodily stability, resulting in power ache, repeated dislocations and in the end the necessity for a wheelchair.

“Going from swimming three times a day, five, six, seven days a week, to just being in bed from a surgery or recuperating, it really takes a mental toll on someone,” stated Northcutt-Wyly, a who graduated in 2024 with a level in well being and human sciences from the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. “I definitely kind of lost who I was.”

Though devastating, the analysis sparked a brand new ardour for debate and incapacity rights advocacy, which she continued to hone at USC. Currently a graduate pupil in public well being on the Keck School of Medicine of USC, her Trojan journey ultimately led her to the Swim with Mike Foundation, a company that raises scholarship cash for disabled athletes.

On Saturday, the muse will host its 45th annual Swim with Mike event at USC, that includes a number of aquatic exercises and races, a wheelchair basketball match and a diving present, all on the USC Uytengsu Aquatics Center on the University Park Campus.

For Northcutt-Wyly, Swim with Mike and USC are the place she discovered new shops for her competitiveness in adaptive sports activities, and the place she reunited along with her old flame of swimming.

“Disability, especially wheelchair use, feels very isolating,” Northcutt-Wyly stated.

“I think Swim with Mike does an excellent job bringing people together.”

Diagnosis and path to USC for Swim with Mike beneficiary

To say that the analysis blindsided Northcutt-Wyly can be an understatement. Her signs started with a lack of sensation in her limbs throughout swim apply, which she initially disregarded as an overuse damage. Soon extra severe points adopted, equivalent to repeated joint dislocations that unfold from her shoulders to her knees, hips and ankles, together with extreme accidents like a torn rotator cuff. She additionally had unexplained issues throughout surgical procedure, together with a harmful response to anesthesia.

“When you’re in a chair, your goal isn’t even to get back to the pool — it’s how can I go to school at this point,” she stated.

When her sickness compelled her out of aggressive swimming, Northcutt-Wyly pivoted to debate as each an outlet and a chance. What started as a approach to keep engaged in highschool advanced right into a goal, particularly as she began specializing in incapacity entry and well being care coverage. Debate gave her a brand new sense of path and goal, ultimately incomes her a full scholarship to USC.

“People are always like, ‘Oh, it’s so cool you chose this path,’ and I didn’t really have a choice,” Northcutt-Wyly stated. “I knew I had to go to school, and when there’s not infrastructure there, you have to create it.”

Swim with Mike and adaptive sports activities

Contrary to its title, the origins of the primary Swim with Mike occasion began removed from a pool. On Jan. 2, 1981, a dirt-biking accident paralyzed Mike Nyeholt, a USC All-American and three-time NCAA champion swimmer. Friends and teammates organized a fundraiser to buy a specialised van so Nyeholt may proceed his training at USC. The occasion — named “Swim for Mike” on the time — was a swim-a-thon that featured USC swimmers, volunteers and donors doing laps round a pool on campus. Organizers raised $58,000, and Nyeholt determined to pay it ahead and maintain the occasion going for different disabled athletes.

Since that first fundraiser, the occasion has featured Olympians, celebrities and even former U.S. President Ronald Reagan. Over greater than 40 years of occasions, the Swim with Mike Foundation has raised greater than $25 million and awarded over 300 scholarships to recipients at greater than 150 universities throughout the nation.

“I think that Swim with Mike really centering around academic achievement is something that’s pretty unique and something that we need more of,” Northcutt-Wyly stated.

Through connections she constructed at USC, together with adaptive sports activities organizations like Angel City Sports and the supportive visibility of Swim with Mike, she was launched to wheelchair basketball and the broader world of adaptive athletics.

Coaching, mentoring and giving again

Amid all Northcutt-Wyly has overcome in her life, she is most pleased with her means to take her experiences and provides again to the youthful era of adaptive sports activities athletes. Coaching and mentoring youthful athletes has helped her take private wrestle and switch it into collective impression. By working with youthful athletes with disabilities, she helps create the type of group and alternative she as soon as lacked — exhibiting them not simply that adaptive sports activities exist, however that they will compete and create group inside them.

“For them to have that sense of community and sense of pride going through school, knowing and believing in their innate ability to do things, whether that’s sports or school or whatever, I find that super important,” she stated.

Beyond athletics, her advocacy stems from lived expertise, pushing for accessibility, well being care fairness and larger consciousness in tutorial and public areas. For Northcutt-Wyly, these roles aren’t separate from her id — they’re extensions of it, permitting her to show isolation into connection and obstacles into pathways for others.

“I think sports, and team sports especially, are so important, not just for physicality, but for mental and emotional development,” Northcutt-Wyly stated. “One of the coolest things is seeing athletes realize that there is something more, that they can be in a chair and not only play sports, but be athletes.”