Crystal Lake legally blind swimmer training to make paralympic team, hopes to inspire

CRYSTAL LAKE – Makayla Nietzel was not sure whether she should compete. She never had swum in a lake before, it was dark outside, and the legally blind swimmer accidentally left her prescription goggles at home.

She swam a 3-mile race this summer in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, by following the feet of swimmers ahead of her, despite not being able to see the triangular shaped swim path of the lake bound by buoys.

This is Makayla’s goal – to never give up because of her blindness – and she’s training to take this goal all the way to the 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo.

She advanced one step closer
Oct. 20 when U.S. Paralympic swimming high performance director Queenie Nichols told Makayla, 14, that if she could match swim times she already met at a USA disability meet, Nichols wants her on the paralympic B-team.

“I was almost crying, my eyes were full of tears,” Makayla said. “I was just thinking I need to train as hard as I can because I want to make this team.”

Makayla was born with albinism, a genetic condition that reduces the amount of melanin pigment formed in skin, hair and eyes, leading to vision problems.

Makayla and her mom, Terri Nietzel of Crystal Lake, traveled to Augusta, Georgia, for the 2017 ASL Fred Lamback Disability Meet, where U.S. coaches Nichols and Jamie Martin were in attendance.

Terri spent hours researching how to make a paralympic team and noticed that Makayla already had met B-team standard times in some events.

“We see some of the struggles of people at the meet, but they get in the water and everybody is out there doing the same thing,” Terri said. “It’s pretty amazing to see what you can overcome when you are swimming.”

Makayla now is gearing up for the Can-Am Open meet Dec. 15 to 17 in North Carolina. She practices twice a day, five days a week, as well as on the weekends with her mom if there isn’t a meet.

“The whole reason I’m doing this is because I want people with disabilities to know they can accomplish something despite what they have,” Makayla said.

She said that in some way, she feels as though she already reached that goal last weekend, when a little girl about 8 years old, who also has albinism, walked up to her.

“Her hair was really light, she was squinting, she was like me and she asked for my autograph and said, ‘I believe you’re going to be an Olympian one day,’ ” Makayla said. “I feel like I somewhat accomplished my goal because I inspired her.”

Swimming without seeing

Sage YMCA lead intermediate coach Grant Dahlke said that at a meet, Makayla cannot see the times on the board. She will walk over and coaches say, “Makayla, do you know what you just did?”

“She comes over and I get to tell her, ‘You made state’ and her reaction was great,” Dahlke said. “You get choked up at moments like that because it means something.”

Makayla said what makes her unique as a swimmer is her vision and the way she handles it. She counts her strokes from flags hanging above, she can’t see the bottom of the pool, and she compensates when she turns close to the wall.

During relays, her teammate, Jamie Gindorf, will stand at the blocks and yell when it is time to go. Makayla can’t do the backstroke outside because she is sensitive to the light.

Crowds are hard to navigate at meets, and a friend or Terri has to take her into a new locker room because she can’t find the team if it is sitting in a new location.

“I don’t really know if most of her teammates even know she has a visual challenge because she approaches the pool, workouts and sport like anyone else,” Dahlke said. “I think that’s pretty damn admirable.”

Dahlke said that when he is demonstrating stroke techniques and showing swimmers how arm movements should look, Makayla often is looking down at the water and listening intently.

“She doesn’t have the benefit of when we say to look at our arms, and she has to visualize it all in her head how to move,” Dahlke said.

Jumping in

Makayla began swimming competitively at age 11 and swims for both the Sage YMCA Piranhas team and the Crystal Lake High School co-op team.

She will compete in the 100-yard butterfly, 100 backstroke, 50 freestyle and 100 freestyle races in December.

Terri signed Makayla and her younger twin siblings up for swimming at a young age because it always terrified her to have kids near water who don’t know how to swim.

When Makayla was 2 or 3 years old, the instructor was taking students one by one down the lane to teach them.

“Makayla would jump in the water when it wasn’t her turn and kept wanting to go in, and the instructor told us to find a private instructor after the first lesson,” Terri said.

Terri said it wasn’t the easiest finding a club to swim at in McHenry County at the time. Dahlke said he and Sage YMCA head coach Ed Richardson wanted to put swimming on the map in McHenry County and that previously, there was no full-year program.

Dahlke said he is excited to see where Makayla goes because she is only 14 and still developing.

“She hasn’t met her peak yet,” Dahlke said. “How high she goes depends on how hard she works.”

Richardson said it has been inspiring to see Makayla fully commit herself to swimming.

“To go and potentially represent your country, I’m not going to get all mushy, but to me that is huge and a very cool thing to have the option to do,” Richardson said. “I would have given anything to do that as an athlete.”