Issue link: https://tmcpulse.uberflip.com/i/1189458
t m c » p u l s e | d e c 2 0 1 9/JA N 2 02 0 9 t m c » p u l s e | d e c 2 0 1 9/JA N 2 02 0 20 T he 2020 Tokyo Paralympic Games are just months away, but native Houstonian and competitive wheelchair basketball player Kaitlyn Eaton has been chasing her Olympic dreams for nearly a decade. Eaton was born with sacral agenesis, a rare birth defect in which the bones of the lower spine are missing or misshapen, impairing development in the bottom half of the body. She has never had functional legs. "To me, my disability was always really nor- malized," Eaton said. "When I was born, one of An elite athlete sets her sights on the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games Kaitlyn Eaton practices shooting at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. S H O O T I N G F OR G O L the things the doctor told my mom was that she should just raise me as one of her other children. I have an older brother and a twin sister, so I didn't get any special treatment growing up because of the disability." Eaton, now 25, describes her twin sister, Kelsey, as a built-in best friend, even though the two could not be more different. "Growing up, we would make fun of the fact that all of our friends still got us confused because we have different facial features, we are not alike and, obviously, one of us is in a wheelchair," Eaton said. Although she wasn't very interested in sports as a child, Eaton joined the TIRR Memorial Hermann Junior Hotwheels Team in Houston during her sophomore year at Jersey Village High School. That's when her passion for basketball was ignited. "I had a pretty late start when it comes to playing wheelchair basketball in general, especially having a disability since birth," Eaton said. "It is a very difficult sport to get the hang of, especially with the ball. When I first started, I was horrible. I was not good at basketball at all." Growing up, Eaton underwent roughly 10 surgeries at Shriners Hospitals for Children - Houston to give her body more flexibility and, later, to help her fit more easily into her basketball wheelchair. ➟ B y B r i t n i R . M c A s h a n D