Tom Miazga: Everything He Could Have Ever Wanted…Almost

Feature by Tyler Remmel

ST. LOUIS, Missouri, May 31. HE’s a sports fanatic, a singer, and a scholar. He also has a vision of being an Paralympic champion, and he’s willing to do whatever it takes to get there.

Tom Miazga is a Paralympic swimmer with Ozaukee Aquatics in southeastern Wisconsin. He will also be a junior at Saint Louis University (St. Louis, Mo.) in the fall.

At SLU, Miazga has had an opportunity that very few Paralympians have: the ability to be a part of an NCAA Division I intercollegiate team. He acknowledges how special that opportunity has been for him.

“Realistically, I probably shouldn’t be swimming on a D-I team…I’m just not up to that par,” he said.

Miazga was born with spastic diaplegia, the most common form of cerebral palsy. A type of nerve damage, his CP means that neurons in his brain perpetually fire the message for muscles in the legs to contract.

“My lower extremities are always really tight,” he said. “It makes it really hard for me to walk.”

He can walk though, and you can routinely see him swinging his legs around, walking on his toes to the blocks before a race. Spurts of walking actually help his CP.

Cerebral palsy is not technically a progressive disability, but if Tom doesn’t take care of it by stretching routinely and walking as much as he can, it could get worse to the point where he is completely confined to a chair. Swimming helps with the CP too.

On land, Miazga obviously feels a sense of confinement in his chair. His chair kept him from playing the pick-up soccer or football games in grade school. In general, he says that it was difficult at times to make friends as a child, just because kids are so judgmental, “Emotions run like a roller coaster.”

Instead, a teacher, Steve Keller, reached out to Tom at recess and they would shoot hoops together. Steve had taught Tom’s older siblings so he knew of Tom and his disability, but no one ever asked Steve to take the initiative in the situation. They’d play basketball every day, and Tom says the other kids got jealous.

You see, Steve was one of those “cool” teachers in elementary school. He got points for being one of the few male teachers in the school, and got even more points for being a funny guy. Everyone else wanted to hang out with “Mr. Keller.”

“He made me realize that there’s a lot more of me than just a kid in a wheelchair,” Miazga said.

At the time, Steve was the swim coach at Cedarburg High School (Tom’s alma mater), and was just starting Ozaukee Aquatics.

Steve noticed that Tom had a strong upper body (from the wheelchair), and encouraged him to try swimming. So, when Steve put up a private lesson in a school silent auction when Tom was in second grade, his mother bid on it and hoped to win.

As soon as she bid on the lesson, though, Steve bid on it as well, shooting the price up “super high.”

“Basically, he won it for himself,” Tom said.

Tom and his mother were confused, disappointed, and slightly angry when it was announced that Steve won the lesson. He caught up to Tom before he left and said, “Wait, wait, I had to make sure you won this [lesson].”

Steve actually increased the price to win the lesson for Tom, and their relationship had begun. Tom went to the lesson that next week and had a blast. But, more importantly, Tom realized how at peace he was in the water.

“The limitations that I had on dry land were gone,” he said. “I could stand on one foot in the pool all day if I wanted to; I couldn’t last 10 seconds on dry land.”

He didn’t have to worry about the chair, either. He just felt free. He knew that he had found his calling right away.

Steve was a senior coach at the time, so when Tom started, Steve wasn’t his coach.

Tom swam until fifth grade, when a slip behind the blocks turned him off from the sport (remember those judgmental kids?). His older brother was playing baseball at the time, so naturally Tom wanted to give it a try.

His baseball days lasted all the way through middle school. By this point Tom had completely stopped swimming, and he didn’t even talk to or see Steve anymore because he was in middle school.

Time passed, and the two might occasionally say an awkward hello if their paths crossed downtown, but that was the extent to their relationship over those years. High school came, and setting up for a Student Council event freshman year, Tom passed by the pool and saw Steve coaching. They exchanged that awkward “we need to catch up” glance, and Tom went into the pool to say hi.

They talked for more than an hour. “I ended up…leaving the pool realizing that [Steve] is one of my really good friends,” he said. “[I knew I had to] be back in the pool.”

That was a few weeks before the high school season was beginning. He didn’t really have any expectations at that point; he just knew that swimming didn’t have any cuts, and his chances of making the baseball team were slim.

And while he had some experience from when he first took up the sport six years prior, it was still like starting up all over again. His determination led him on a steady rise, though, becoming a national champion in the 100 back at the 2006 National Championships, and eventually winning the first gold medal for all of Team USA at the 2007 Para-Pan American Games in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, in the 100 back. He went on to win six medals at the meet.

All these major competitions were simply a lead-up to the 2008 Beijing Games for Miazga, though. That experience is one of his proudest, and he holds it near to his heart (and also his arm; he has the Olympic rings tattooed on his right biceps).

He was only a junior in high school at that point, and says making it to Beijing was “icing on the cake.” He and Steve’s original goal was to make it to the 2012 games. Regardless, he still held himself to a high standard after making the team.

His goal was to final at the meet, which he did in the 400 freestyle; he was .03 from qualifying in his signature event, the 100 back. Outside of satisfying that goal, he used the meet as a learning experience. After all, you don’t get a better environment to acclimate to high-level international competition as you do at the Paralympic Games.

In talking to Tom about making it to Beijing though, you can see how important Steve is to his swimming. It’s not, “When I made Beijing,” it’s, “When we made Beijing.” Tom and Steve are very close, and they both know that.

Tom describes his connection with Steve as a friendship where they look more like two friends than as a coach and swimmer. At practices they might come in talking about a trade they made in fantasy baseball, and during sets Steve might make fun of Tom for his legs, for which Tom will counter with a joke about Steve’s gut or being fat. Simply put, Tom really wants to be just like Steve.

As impressive as his swimming accolades have been, Tom’s collegiate resume of extracurriculars is just as impressive. In addition to being on the team, he is a Presidential Scholar and a member of “SLU Decadence,” an a capella group. Balance all that with his physical therapy major and all the travel that’s required in being a national team member, and Tom’s always on the move. Just this last weekend, he was at a Paralympic World Cup event in Manchester, England.

For Tom, though, the biggest struggle in college has been figuring out where the importance of the Billiken swim team is for him. During his freshman year, Tom says that he focused all of his attention on the college season instead of on his Paralympic aspirations. He learned, and last year he sat down and decided that he was going to “do me,” which meant passing on a few meets, including the Atlantic 10 conference meet, so he could save his taper for a Paralympic meet.

As a matter of fact, Tom is actually done swimming with the Billikens now. A large incoming class and resulting cuts helped Tom to make the decision to train at home in Wisconsin leading up to and following the Trials and Paralympics next year. He’s going to take a full year off of school (the spring and fall 2012 semesters), and go for broke, with the ultimate goal of scoring a gold medal and world record at the meet. He trusts that they can do it.

While the Steve-Tom relationship is one of the key factors in Tom’s current prominence, the opportunities Tom has been given have helped him almost as much. At SLU especially, head coach Jim Halliburton’s decision to allow Tom to be a full-fledged Billiken was huge. Although it was hard for Tom at first to get used to training at first–warm-up in itself would be a workout–he said, “It’s been more than I could ever expect.”

Tom is living the dream. He actually decided on SLU based on the academics alone; the swimming working out just made it even more perfect. You see, at most of the schools Tom considered, the coaches shooed him away from their teams, telling him that he could just swim on their club team.

That wasn’t what he wanted, though. As far as Tom was concerned, he was done swimming club; he was going to college and he wanted to swim with other college swimmers.

It has to be noted that Tom’s decision to stop swimming collegiately is not a result of any negative experience with the team or coaches. It’s not that he feels that his talents weren’t appreciated, either (he cherished his role as a team motivator, and loved the family atmosphere). He just loves Paralympic competition so much.

“It’s nice to actually have someone to race,” he said.

Even though he may feel free in the water, when he’s racing able-bodied athletes, his flaws are still obvious. That doesn’t matter in Paralympics, though.

“It’s nice to have people around that know what I’m trying to do,” Tom said. “Whether it’s through OZ or SLU, no one has really seen me swim Paralympically…they don’t realize how well I do for myself, they don’t realize I’m winning all these events.”

He said, “I have a much more prominent name in Paralympics.”

Prominent is an understatement. In the backstrokes and freestyles, Tom is tops in the United States. In addition to American records, Tom holds the Parapan American records in the 100 and 200 back, and is ranked sixth in the world in the 100 LCM back. Tom is confident that he will return to the Paralympics in London.

As for training in the future, Tom is looking at opportunities to swim with a post-graduate team, to experience what it’s like to train with people who are all so focused on the Paralympics.

And even though he is studying physical therapy, Tom ultimately aspires to start his own club team, just like Steve did.

“I’m going to die on a pool deck,” he said. “That’s my goal.”

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