International call for Meggan after change of sport
Former Commonwealth Games athlete Meggan Dawson-Farrell has been rewarded for her bold decision to change sports with selection for the Scotland team to compete at the World Wheelchair Curling Championships in Wetzikon, Switzerland later this month.
The 27 year-old from Tullibody who was named as the team’s fifth member, previously represented her country in the 2014 Commonwealth Games ParaSports 1500m wheelchair event and has demonstrated her speed in a different way with her rapid progress since being inducted into the British Curling programme earlier this season, having taken up the sport just last year.
“I had my first taste of wheelchair curling at a ‘come and try’ session at the National Curling Academy in Stirling in May 2019 and I was hooked from that point on,” she said.
That session was led by Paralympic Sochi bronze medallist Robert McPherson, who introduced her to the game and she is delighted that she will now be joining him and team mates Hugh Nibloe, David Melrose, as well as fellow debutant Charlotte McKenna from Bridge of Allan at the World Champs at the end of the month.
“I would never have presumed that I might get the call up. If there is no expectation there are no blows, so it was a great surprise and an honour to get the selection, especially as I am so new to the sport and my team mates are a very talented bunch of athletes and very well-deserving individuals,” added Meggan.
She added: “It feels a bit surreal to have been selected, it has not quite sunk in yet and my mum and dad are over the moon and they know I have worked hard for this. I am extremely grateful for all the support and training I have received and I have felt a bit like a sponge, trying to absorb everything I possibly can.”
Meggan hopes her example of talent transfer and the prospect of representing Scotland for a second time will inspire others to try curling. However, she admitted that she had to overcome her own fears to start her relatively late career pathway to becoming a full time athlete and feels sport in many ways has been her salvation.
“It actually makes me feel a bit scared when I think what my life would have been like if I had not discovered my love of sport and it really is thanks to my parents,” she added.
Born with spina bifida, she has always been a wheelchair user and her sporting talents went undiscovered until her parents Kirstie and John booked her a place at a sports camp in Largs, organised by Scottish Disability Sport and Spina Bifida Hydrocephalus Scotland.
“I was 16 years old, I was resistant to going and I was terrified, so much so that my mum and aunt had to book into a local B&B in Largs,” she recalled.
“However for the first time I was surrounded by other kids like me who had a disability. I felt welcome, I could relate to others and not having had any previous experience or provision of sport during my school years, I suddenly discovered I loved it.”
She was encouraged to join local