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Northwest student to attend Paralympics this week
Photo by James Nix
Jill Moore talks with her track coach Jeremy Cawley during practice at Northwest Cabarrus High School Tuesday afternoon.
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Published: March 10, 2010
KANNAPOLIS - Ten years ago, Jill Moore never dreamed of playing sports. This week, the multi-sport athlete will be attending the 2010 Paralympic Experience in Vancouver, and watching people compete at a level she hopes to reach one day.
"I've been at home just getting psyched up," Moore, 17, a junior at Northwest Cabarrus High School, said. "I've been watching the Olympics religiously. That was one big pump up."
The 2010 Paralympic Experience allows 13 student athletes with physical disabilities and six coaches, program leaders and teachers to attend the Paralympic Winter Games.
Moore will leave tomorrow, and stay in Vancouver for a week for the event. Once there, she will watch the opening ceremony, meet the athletes, view events and explore the area.
She said just going to the Paralympics is the most exciting part of it all.
"I get to go to Vancouver to meet all the Paralympic athletes and watch them at the top of their goal," Moore said.
To earn a spot at the Paralympic Experience, Moore had to submit either a video or written essay about how sports have positively influenced her life.
"Sports have taught me that I'm not just some science experiment gone wrong," Moore wrote in her essay. "I'm a person with a love of life; I am an athlete."
Moore also wrote of her goal of becoming a Paralympian, even though, years ago, she had never dreamed of competing in sports.
"When I was little, I used to think, 'I'm never going to be anything because I'm in a wheelchair,'" Moore said. "Then, if you asked me if I'd be going to Vancouver, I'd say, 'what planet are you from?'"
Moore was born with spina bifida, which affects her spinal cord.
Being in a wheelchair, she said she never knew that you could play sports, too. She heard about wheelchair sports from a man she met while on a 150-mile tandem bike ride with her dad.
Not long after, she went to a wheelchair basketball tournament in Maryland.
"That's when she found out she wasn't fragile," said Patti Moore, Jill's mother. "She could (participate) in a sport."
From there, Jill Moore said it was like a domino effect. Over the course of about seven years, she has competed in basketball, swimming and track and field events and has taken up water and snow skiing, among other things.
Last year, she became the first wheelchair athlete in the state to compete in regional and state finals and score points for her high school team.
"That was a proud, proud day," Patti Moore said.
In addition to participating in high school sports, Jill Moore is also a member of the Carolina Cruisers track and field team and the Charlotte Rollin' Bobcats Junior Varsity wheelchair basketball team.
Among her accomplishments, Moore said her proudest moment was earning the first National All Academic Team for National Wheelchair Basketball Association last year.
"I was a sophomore and made the team over juniors, seniors, high-ranking people," Moore said.
Her mother, Patti Moore, said it is hard for her to pick her proudest moment, but included when Jill was named the 2008 Junior Athlete of the Year by Sports 'N Spokes magazine, which honored her for her community service and promoting wheelchair sports.
As Jill Moore experiences another memorable event this week, she said she is not nervous about meeting the athletes because she is a friend of several who compete in the summer Paralympic sports.
"These Paralympic athletes are respected beyond belief, but they are all close," Moore said. "It's more of a meeting of close friends."
Moore's long-term goals include becoming a Paralympian and a pediatric orthopedist. For now, she approaches life with an attitude about adapting, something her mother said Jill has been doing all her life.
"Live in the moment, learn as you go and hope it all turns out alright," Jill Moore said.
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