SETH SOFFIAN

SSOFFIAN@NEWS-PRESS.COM

In the worst moments, Evita Leter struggled with uncertainty and self-doubt.

Multiple trips to the emergency room in a diabetic shock weren’t great either.

More than two years after being diagnosed with Type I, or juvenile, diabetes during the spring of her freshman year, though, the FGCU swimmer beams brightly as she talks about what will be one of the defining moments of her life: competing in the 2016 Rio Olympics.

“I can’t really put it into words yet,” said Leter, who will represent her native Suriname in the 100-meter breaststroke on Sunday in Brazil. “I’m a little nervous but it’ll be a lot of fun.”

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So well-liked by teammates that former FGCU coach Neal Studd playfully calls her “the people’s champion," Leter was a rising freshman star with enormous potential when her times suddenly fell off a cliff beginning at FGCU’s conference meet in February 2014.

“I looked at myself and thought, ‘What have I done?’” said Studd, hired by Florida State in July to coach its men’s and women’s programs after nine years building the FGCU women into a mid-major power.

“She really didn’t do well after conference either. I was kind of beating myself up about it. A couple days later she collapsed and ended up in the hospital.”

Leter – from South America’s only Dutch-speaking nation, on the Atlantic Ocean coast north of Brazil – was diagnosed immediately but was still hospitalized at least twice more in diabetic shock, Studd said.

“There was a lot to adjust with her diet,” he said.

Like many FGCU swimmers, Leter had been a little-known international recruit with major upside.

That quickly, she and her family worried whether she’d even be good enough to keep her scholarship, a notion Studd said was never considered even if she hadn’t been able to continue swimming.

“That would have been the furthest thing from my mind, not figuring this out and her not being part of the team,” said Studd, a physiology devotee who has known and coached diabetic athletes previously.

“We’ve had some kids over the years that had the issue, but not as badly as her. She’s someone you kind of have to keep after, because she’s never going to tell you something’s wrong. I kind of had to read her body language and check with the other girls.”

Diabetes didn’t affect any specific area of Leter’s performance, Studd said, other than training interruptions to correct her insulin levels.

“When they get out of balance it can be disaster,” Studd said. “You don’t notice they have a problem until it’s danger.”

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Leter, who joins FGCU swim teammate Lani Cabrera of Barbados and former FGCU volleyball star Brooke Sweat in giving the school its largest ever Olympic contingent, finally was fitted with an insulin pump about a year ago, at the end of her sophomore season.

But it took until this season for her times – and confidence – to recover.

“It was a little hard,” Leter said. “I never really got to see where I could have been that year. At the rate I was going I felt like I was going to (have) the best years yet to come. It was a bit of a setback not being able to improve my times. But I’m glad I overcame it. I’m excited for where I am now.”

It was only about a month ago, at the Caribbean Islands Swimming Championships in the Bahamas, where Leter finally reset her lifetime bests in the 50- and 100-meter breaststroke with times of 32.44 seconds and 1:12.99, respectively.

A couple weeks later, when the swimmer who was slated to represent Suriname in Rio through the “universality” qualifying standard wasn’t able to attend, Leter got the invite instead.

“She’s just such a great kid. She’s literally just beloved by everybody,” said Studd, noting the swimmer tidying up the FGCU pool deck while still only a recruit, or the reaction of teammates to her win in February in the 100 breaststroke at the conference meet. “I’ve never seen kids or alumni so excited to see a girl win.”

Fifteen years old when she first moved to the United States to train with a club team and live with a host family in Miami, Leter said her family never would have been able to afford to send her to college without a scholarship.

Leter’s father, a professor, moved to the Netherlands when she was young to help support the family while her mother, also a professor, stayed behind to raise her, her older sister and younger brother.

“It is very important,” she said of her scholarship, with which she’s on pace to graduate with a finance degree next spring. “We have a lot of inflation in Suriname right now.”

That’s one reason she said she never considered quitting swimming after being diagnosed with diabetes. There's also the vital benefit from regular exercise managing the disease.

But the swimmer who graciously smiles away any praise has clung to one personal motivation through her ordeal. It’s the kind being rewarded with her new title: Olympian.

“When you’re older you’re going to wonder, ‘What if I could have done this?’” Leter said. “I don’t want the, ‘What if?’ I want to be like, ‘I have accomplished it.’”

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