‘I feel so free when I’m running’: Meghan Josling
Special Olympics champion overcomes obstacles on, off track
Five thousand metres, just over three miles. You have to play the “long game,” so to speak, to excel at that distance in track and field. Preserve your strength, pace yourself, time your charges. Patience.
I think of all her medals at the recent Special Olympics provincial finals in Peel — she won five golds (count ’em, five) — the 5,000 was the sweetest for Meghan Josling.
When she switched from swimming to track as her main athletic pursuit a few years ago, Meghan took one event at a time, starting with the dashes and building up to longer endurances. The 5,000 loomed in the “distance” as both a goal and a possible nemesis she feared might prove to lie beyond her powers.
It didn’t. In Peel she ran it in 27 minutes.
“I feel so free when I’m running,” says Meghan.
Not much lies beyond her powers anymore. Soon Meghan’ll be back at Mohawk College, helping with orienteering and limbering up for her second year in the Community Integration Co-operative Education (CICE) program. Last year she got a 93 average and made the dean’s honour list. She volunteers. She’s on the varsity team.
Did I mention the long game? Meghan is 22 now. When she was 10 she could barely talk. She had a very limited vocabulary and what she said was hard to understand. She was born with a congenital condition called Noonan Syndrome which, in her case, caused developmental delays and other complications.
In the first 10 years of her life Meghan had 12 to 15 seizures. A day. She would have terrible furies, was on five medications and couldn’t finish a thought. She had to hold on to things just to walk.
“I’d get frustrated, violent. No one wanted to be with me.”
At 10, Meghan underwent a brain surgery and the seizures stopped. It was, gradually, like life was beginning again; a reset.
“It was transformational,” says mom Lesley Josling.
Meghan’s made such impressive strides. She’s athletic, bright, articulate in her distinctive way. She talks with the colourfully expressive facial poetry that you sometimes see in those using sign language, which makes sense. Meghan does sign language.
“Watching this girl running a race,” says grandmother Nancy Josling — and here she begins to tear up — “I never thought ... ”
Was Nancy there when Meghan won her golds? Does the planet Saturn go anywhere without its rings? Nancy was there. Like a rainbow.
Not only does Nancy attend all of Meghan’s meets and milestones, she brings a posse. She and three friends — who root for Meghan every inch of her journey — travelled to Peel and made a wonderful spectacle of themselves in the stands.
Not just for Meghan. In a recent Spectator letter to the editor, Nancy wrote of the spirit at the Special Olympics provincials.
“... to see these athletes ... try their hardest to win while never losing sight of ... having fun. The camaraderie witnessed makes one wonder if these athletes have life figured out while the rest of us struggle ... . ”
Meghan, from Brantford, lives with Nancy on the Mountain during the Mohawk school year. “She injects fun into my quiet life,” says Nancy. “We’re tight,” says Meghan. Mom is a counselling services director. She says Meghan’s endurance has been “transformational for all of us. Her sheer guts and determination.”
All of us is the family — mom, grandmother, Rob and siblings Kyle and Kirsten who’ve stood shoulder to shoulder with her, not the least in dealing with bullying.
“She (Meghan) has a real eye for social justice,” says mom.
When she sees unfairness: “I just won’t put up with it,” says Meghan, fiercely. Meghan also won golds in the 4 x 100m and 4 x 400m relays and 1,500m and 3,000m. And I love the way she describes her endurance running strategy.
“You try to be very gentle on your feet, like a tiger stalking its prey. You don’t come stomping from behind.”
She’s a tigress stalking her own destiny, catching up. Hear her coming? If not (she’s got gentle feet), you’ll see her when she passes.
Meghan Josling — champion.
You try to be very gentle on your feet, like a tiger stalking its prey. MEGHAN JOSLING CHAMPION