Studying To Fly: Katie Kubiak’s Butterfly World Report Highlighted A Dominant Displaying At Para Pan Pacs

Katie Kubiak touched the wall within the 50-meter butterfly, noticed her time and instantly threw her fist within the air.

Her smile was nearly as huge because the pool itself. She’d not solely received the race on the Para Pan Pacific Championships in California final month but additionally set an S5 world file. In the second, it was pure celebration. Now it looks like one other full-circle second in a swimming profession that continues to evolve and develop.

“I could not figure out fly for the life of me when I first came back to Paralympic swimming,” Kubiak, 23, mentioned. “It didn’t click with my body. It didn’t make sense. I think the reaction after just kind of encompassed it. It was just such a special moment for me personally because it showed me how far I’ve come within this journey.”

Once a standout able-bodied swimmer, Kubiak left the game in highschool in 2018 as her late-onset congenital myopathy worsened and he or she confronted spinal surgical procedure. She assumed her swimming profession was over. Six years later, she returned to the identical Orlando pool the place she swam her final highschool meet and received 5 titles at her first Para swimming nationwide championships. She has dominated main worldwide meets ever since.

But Pan Pacs felt completely different. Over the final 12 months, she’s realized to simply accept that her neurological situations imply her bodily efficiency can range considerably from each day. Her success affirmed that change in her strategy to coaching.

“I think in prior seasons, I let that get to my head a lot during training and it would frustrate me a lot more,” she mentioned. “I would try to push through it when it probably wasn’t safe or healthy, and I would pay the price for it in the days and weeks after, which doesn’t help anyone get to where they want to be any faster. So I think that was really crucial for me this season was learning how to show myself grace on the days where my 100 percent on a low day might be 50 percent or even 20 percent on a perfect day, and acknowledging that even though what I had to offer was less than I wanted, I still gave it my 100 percent on that day.”

Kubiak’s current success at Para Pan Pacs — along with her world file within the 50 fly, she set 5 American information whereas profitable three occasions and taking second in one other — additionally got here on the heels of a reclassification.

She swam primarily S4 at her first world championships final 12 months, the place she received seven medals, together with 4 gold, and tied Leanne Smith as Team USA’s most adorned swimmer on the meet. With the brand new classification has come a brand new set of challenges and objectives.

“That means I have to do the 200 IM and the 100 breaststroke, and my breaststroke leg is my weakest,” she mentioned. “And that was something I could get away with not having to swim for the longest time. So I would love to see my breaststroke become decent. Passable.”

Of course, Kubiak as soon as mentioned the identical about butterfly. She had no intention of swimming the stroke, she mentioned, till she realized she needed to in an effort to get internationally labeled.

“I literally went from not even being able to swim it to the 10-meter mark to swimming to 25 really, really slow,” she mentioned. “And then finding the technique that worked for my body.”

That development led to silver eventually 12 months’s world championships and, now, a world file.

A current graduate of NYU, Kubiak’s doing much more than coaching full-time. She’s additionally working full-time in broadcast information for SportsNet New York masking the New York Mets, Knicks and Jets and not too long ago picked up a second gig with the corporate producing and modifying digital content material. Earlier this summer time she spoke on the United Nations on the intersection of Paralympic sports activities and incapacity rights, and in October she’ll journey again to her dwelling state of Wisconsin to talk at an annual summit on incapacity inclusion, accessibility and fairness within the office. 

For all her success, there’s one factor Kubiak hasn’t but skilled: the Paralympic Games. She returned to swimming after watching Tokyo in 2021 and started dominating worldwide Para competitors simply after Paris in 2024. Now, with Los Angeles nonetheless almost two years away, she’s studying to be affected person with a dream that immediately feels inside attain.

“Especially now, I try to treat every season as its own,” she mentioned. “Every year within the quad is its own season, and hopefully within that season I’m racing at three major international competitions. So I try to break that up into smaller goals as well. It just makes the training a lot more digestible and gives you little things to look forward to along the way and little benchmarks to let you know you’re still on the right course.”

Karen Price is a reporter from Pittsburgh who has lined Olympic and Paralympic sports activities for numerous publications. She is a contract contributor to USParaSwimming.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.