Pregnant Lora eyes 5th medal

Tokyo, Sept. 2: The volleyball phrase “bump, set, spike” has a special ring for American Lora Webster.

She’s a sitting volleyball player at the Tokyo Paralympics, and for her the bump refers to something entirely different.

She’s five months pregnant and expecting her fourth child.

“I don’t really remember half the time that I’m pregnant when I’m playing, except for the occasional kick I get while I’m on the court,” said the 35-year-old Webster, who lost her lower left leg to bone cancer when she was 11.

“I just have to be more conscious of how I’m diving. When I do dive, I have to consider I’m not diving straight on my stomach,” she said.

Pregnancy. Paralympics. They go together for Webster. She going for her fifth medal in her fifth Paralympics, and a couple merit asterisks. This is the second Paralympics in which she’s been pregnant, and the third time during a competition. She and her American teammates face Brazil on Friday in the semifinals with a possible gold-medal game on Sunday on the closing day of the Games.

“It’s not dangerous as long as you have a healthy pregnancy,” she said.

“But it just seems bizarre to be so far along and competing,” she added.

Webster won gold five years ago in Rio de Janeiro to go with silver medals in London and Beijing, and a bronze in her first Games in 2004 in Athens.

“My body has been playing volleyball for 18 years. The movement are normal,” Webster said.

“My body is trained in it, so my body is able to balance both the pregnancy and the competition fairly well,” Webster added.

Sitting volleyball follows most of the same rules as standing volleyball. There are six players on a side, but the court is smaller 10m x 6m (about 32 x 20 feet) and the net for women is set at 1.05m (just over 3 feet).

“The stigma of disability is much heavier than the actual disability that many of us carry,” she said.

Webster played standing volleyball in high school, wearing her prosthetic, and said she was offered a college scholarship. Instead, she started focusing in 2003 on the sitting game. —

— AP Lora Webster (right) with the US women’s sitting volleyball team sets the ball during practice in Edmond, Oklahoma, in this photo taken in July this year.