

Dalton Herendeen, 23, shown last month in Stafford, Va., training for his second Paralympic Games, which begin Wednesday in Rio de Janeiro. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

Dalton Herendeen was petrified when he showed up for his first swimming practice in seventh grade, not knowing what the rest of the middle school boys would say after he removed his prosthetic left leg in the locker room. They just stared. Herendeen dove into the pool first that day in 2006, but nobody else did.

“I swam my very first practice by myself. I came home that day and I told my mom and dad that I’m done,” Herendeen said. “My dad said, ‘Listen, you started it, you’re going to finish it. If you don’t want to swim after seventh grade, that’s fine, but you have to finish.’ I’m so thankful for my dad saying that.”

A decade later, Herendeen, 23, still begins most mornings alone in the pool. He always felt different than everyone else on dry land, but in the water he has found the ultimate acceptance.

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He has become an accomplished name in the swimming world. Herendeen set records at the University of Indianapolis and last year earned a job as an assistant swimming coach at Mary Washington University in Fredericksburg, Va., at the ripe age of 22. This month, he will be one of more than 4,000 disabled athletes from 176 countries set to compete in the Paralympic Games, which begin Wednesday in Rio de Janeiro. While financial issues have led to cuts at this year’s Games, Herendeen said his status has not been effected, and he will certainly arrive in Brazil as a gleaming symbol of athletic resilience.



Herendeen, whose left leg was amputated below the knee three days after he was born, underwent reconstructive surgery on his right knee last summer, the result of stress put on the joint from wearing a prosthetic. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

Scheduled to compete in six events for Team USA, Herendeen is determined to earn his first medal (he competed in five events at the 2012 Paralympics in London). But just qualifying for these Games during the U.S. trials in Charlotte in July was an accomplishment in itself.

Herendeen has learned to thrive without his lower left leg, which was amputated after doctors discovered a blood clot below his knee three days after he was born. But the prosthetic puts abnormal amounts of stress on his healthy right leg. He blew out his knee during the world championships last summer, and he thought about quitting at that point. He decided to have reconstructive surgery — he lost his meniscus and his anterior cruciate ligament — and make one more run at the Paralympics, which required two months of rest and five months of hard-core training.

Just as he had done his entire life, Herendeen was adapting. Growing up in Elkhart, Ind., he was fitted with his first prosthetic when he was 1 and he had major surgeries on the left leg at 6 and 10 because of overgrowth on the bone. He learned to deal with the bruising and wounds that would develop on the stump of his leg — and the mental torment of being different from most every other child he met. He tried playing soccer, basketball and football, but none of those sports stuck. He learned how to swim on summer road trips to his grandmother’s house on a lake in Michigan, but not until the first day of seventh grade did he take the full plunge into the sport.

“People highlight differences. It’s kind of a tough social adjustment,” said Jeffrey Ackman, an orthopedic surgeon at Shriners Hospitals for Children in Chicago who fit Herendeen with his first prosthetic and has been treating him since he was born. “His personality kind of came out. To me, it was kind of like, ‘Well I can be like everyone else when I was in the water.’ He just took to swimming.”



Herendeen said of one coaching technique: “When a kid comes into practice and says, ‘Oh, my legs are hurting.’ I kind of just look at him. And they’re like, ‘All right, all right. I’m okay.’ ” (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

After considering quitting as a seventh grader, the aforementioned pep talk he received from his father, Steve, transformed Herendeen’s life. He continued to adapt with prosthetics, which sometimes rusted quickly because of the amount of time he was spending in the pool. He excelled against able-bodied swimmers in middle school and high school, when he also began to compete in Paralympics activities. By the time Herendeen graduated from the University of Indianapolis, he was on the NCAA Division II school’s record board for both the 1,000 meters and the mile and had competed at the London Paralympic Games. He also had a degree in physical therapy, but he had decided that he wanted to become a college swimming coach.

Mary Washington Coach Abby Brethauer, whom Herendeen had met at a swimming camp in college, had an opening for an assistant last year and viewed Herendeen as a natural fit for her Division III program. Herendeen relates with the kids because they are essentially his age. The 22-year-old found that some of his best teaching moments came without saying a word.

“When a kid comes into practice and says, ‘Oh, my legs are hurting.’ I kind of just look at him,” Herendeen said. “And they’re like, ‘All right, all right. I’m okay.’ ”

Said Brethauer: “He’s the most positive person I’ve ever met. It’s really hard to be around him and be like, ‘Oh, something in my life isn’t going well.’”

Brethauer said she doesn’t hear as many excuses among her team anymore and said that Herendeen can swim with anyone on the roster during distance events. He will compete in the 100 butterfly, 100 breaststroke, 200 individual medley, 400 freestyle and two relay teams in Rio, which will be the pinnacle of a career that started with one lonely swim in a middle school pool a decade ago. He still feels different when he is out of the water. Brethauer recently shot a video of him walking one day and showed Herendeen. He was stunned to see how badly he limped with his prosthetic. He has never felt that kind of hitch in the water.

“On land or wherever I am, not the water, I feel like I have one leg, I feel like I’m disabled, I feel like I’m different,” Herendeen said. “But when I jump into the water I feel like I’m superhuman. I feel like I have super powers. It’s incredible what the water does for me.”