Swimmer lapping up life of work, competition
Special Olympics medalist also finds time to volunteer with kids, disabled
Becky Carter is happiest when she’s busy.
When a renovation of the Jim Dailey Fitness and Aquatic Center, where she works, meant 10 days off the job, her mother, Ann Carter, had hardly ever seen her more let down.
“You’ve never met somebody so disappointed not to go to work,” Ann said. “She always wants to be around people and does not like to not have anything to do.”
She’s also at ease in a pool, where the 28-year-old won two Special Olympics medals swimming in the national games in Seattle the first week of July.
But that wasn’t always the case. On a family vacation to Florida when Becky was about 10, Ann remembers her normally docile and sweet daughter screaming her lungs out at the edge of the pool, terrified of the water.
It drove Ann “nuts,” she said. Out of frustration, she asked Tay Stratton, a longtime swim coach at the Little Rock Racquet Club, for help. Becky is hearing-impaired and has Down syndrome, which makes communication difficult for her.
“We weren’t going to get our hopes up,” Ann said.
But Stratton said she didn’t have to do much once Becky got in the water.
“I didn’t have to coach her on how to learn,” Stratton said. “When she’s in the water, she’s just at home. I would just sit back and watch her.”
Under the bubble of the
inflatable pool cover at the Racquet Club pool, Becky’s biggest challenge was hearing instructions, with the chattering of other kids echoing across the pool. But Stratton said Becky figured out a solution herself.
“Becky was super unique,” she said. “She would literally go underwater and watch what the other kids were doing.”
Stratton, who has coached swimming for nearly 30 years, hadn’t coached anyone with a hearing disability before.
“I honestly would study her to learn more about our sport,” she said. “She really is an amazing athlete.”
On the Carter family’s next summer trip to Florida, Becky beat her twin brother, Robert, in a friendly race in the pool. Now that she could swim, she had the confidence to compete, first on the Racquet Club’s swim team.
“She kind of just did what we had to offer,” Stratton said.
Becky was excelling, but losing by just a tiny bit each time, Ann said.
Someone suggested getting her into Special Olympics to level the playing field. She first competed at the state level, then traveled to her first national games in Ames, Iowa, at age 16. The next year, she represented Team USA in Shanghai, China.
She also competed as a swimmer at the 2010 national games in Lincoln, Neb., and as a cyclist in the 2014 national games in Princeton, N.J. In the first week of July, she took home silver and bronze medals in swimming from the national games in Seattle.
A co-worker at the Jim Dailey center helped her train, Ann said, and coaches with the state Special Olympics program helped Becky improve as an athlete, according to Stratton.
“They did a fantastic job just taking her by the hand and then leading her on,” Stratton said.
Becky had no qualms about traveling and competing at a national and international level, Ann said. She uses hearing aids and reads lips to compensate for what she doesn’t pick up, but one of her biggest strengths is throwing herself into the mix with new situations and going with the flow.
“She’s been included in anything she wanted to be included in,” Ann said.
A running joke is that every coach and every teammate is Becky’s favorite, Ann said — she’s my favorite, he’s my favorite, they are my favorite.
In 2014, Becky graduated from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences’ Project SEARCH program, a partnership with the Little Rock-based nonprofit ACCESS, which provides services for children with learning disabilities, and Arkansas Rehabilitation Services, a division of the Arkansas Department of Career Education.
Now in its seventh year, Project SEARCH offers ninemonth internships to young adults with developmental disabilities to give them real-world work experience and training.
Three years earlier, she’d spent a year in Fayetteville with a program called Project Launch, which provides people with intellectual disabilities the opportunity to take classes in academics and life skills on the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville campus to help them gain independent living skills.
“When she graduated from high school, we were really worried about her world getting a lot smaller,” Ann said.
Project SEARCH helped her get a job taking care of equipment at the Jim Dailey Fitness and Aquatic Center. But Becky never would have gotten a job at a fitness center if it wasn’t for her involvement in swimming and Special Olympics, Ann said.
“It has helped her develop a sense of being healthy,” she said.
She loves the job so much she gets up at 6 a.m. to get dressed and ready to go despite not starting work until 9 a.m., Ann said.
“We never have a Monday around here,” she said.
Becky also participates in the Therapeutic Recreation Program of the city’s Parks and Recreation Department, which provides programming and activities for people with disabilities. She’s also active in Young Life, the church ministry, and volunteers in the children’s program at Second Presbyterian Church. Her next goal is to move into an apartment of her own in an assisted-living facility, Ann said.
Now, Ann remembers how far her daughter has come whenever she talks to Stratton, the swim coach, at the Racquet Club.
“I go, ‘What if you said no?’”