Siobhan Terry

Disability is this athlete’s super power

Were Rotorua to hold a competition to find who has the city’s most endearing laugh In Profile’s money’s on Siobhan Terry being up there in the placegetters’ circle.

With a name like Siobhan it figures she’s of Irish heritage and true to the Auld Sod’s folk song her Irish eyes smile, they really do.

However, as great a combo as her laugh and smiley eyes are there’s a part of this 20-year-old that isn’t quite so perfect, it’s her left foot. She was born with it turned inward, a condition known as clubfoot 

For some it would be a horrible hindrance, for Siobhan it has been the key to becoming a crack para sportswoman, coach, mentor and youth leader for those who fall into the same category.

Should anyone be in the dark para is the term for sport for those with a disability but there’s no way in the world Siobhan’s allowed her disability to hog-tie her to sidelines. 

Since she was old enough to master the art of walking she’s done so on tiptoes, it’s second nature to her.

There’ve been at least six operations, some major, to straighten her foot as much as that’s surgically possible.

Scans before her birth didn’t pick up the deformity which only became apparent when her mum’s friend, a nurse, examined her immediately after her millennium year arrival at Rotorua Hospital. 

“Apparently what she found was more than a club foot but that was the only word they could use to describe it,” says Siobhan ever so pragmatically.

Hers was quite some arrival.

When it became apparent her umbilical cord was blocking the birth canal her mother was rushed into theatre for an emergency caesarean section.

Siobhan shares the trauma of the event. “The experience was so overwhelming the midwife broke down in tears.”

The news of their daughter’s clubfoot an hour or so later was the next bombshell to hit her family, they’ve never made a big deal of it, neither has Siobhan.

Two days before she turned two her family moved to Hobart where Siobhan spent her primary school years embracing music and sport.

“I went into as many sports events as possible, I got into swimming, cross-country, I liked the PE class a lot. When I got into the pool with my friends I’d do random laps just to see what I could do.”

Those random laps were a precursor to what was to come for her further down the track - a para competitor at national level.

Rotorua return

After a decade away her family returned to Rotorua and the home that’s been in her family for almost 60 years.

Siobhan enrolled at Lakes High where PE teacher Kim Stevenson encouraged her to run with an eye on competing in cross-country races.

“He made us do heaps of laps in the freezing cold. I loved it, that was the fittest I’ve ever been.”

Her English teacher, Ann Eastcott, encouraged her to compete in cross-country events. 

Initially she tackled these as an able-bodied athlete then as a para athlete but pains in her lower back and left leg forced her to call it quits

“It was really hard to make that decision but I wasn’t even able to walk around properly let alone race. For a while after that I wasn’t involved in any sport.”

That was until her mother called her at 6.30am one Saturday from the Aquatic Centre. Siobhan was 15, like any teenager she liked a lie-in.

“She said ‘jump out of bed now and come down for a swim.’ She’d talked to the coach and asked if he’d see her daughter.”

That coach was Henk Greupink, widely recognised for his skill in encouraging and coaching youngsters with disabilities to excel in the pool. Since that meeting five years ago until relatively recently it was almost daily pre-dawn starts for Siobhan who has thrived under his tutoring. 

“Henk got me into para swimming, the first competition I went to there were two or three other para girls there. In the lead-up to the race I cried, going up on the starting block I cried. I swam two laps and got disqualified because I’d wobbled, moved my feet, on the block. But it was all right, I learnt from that and wasn’t nervous any more because that was the worst that could happen.”

Siobhan’s speciality strokes are freestyle, backstroke and a little butterfly.

“I don’t do breaststroke but maybe one day I’ll get into that.”

When she first began to swim at the Aquatic Centre Siobhan did so with the assistance of two fins, however long term this proved too sore for her delicate foot so she continued with one.

With her increased proficiency Greupink suggested she move to afternoon trainings  but nerves got the better of her.

“In my group I had been the fastest in the pool, I didn’t think I could keep pace with 18-year-olds, I didn’t feel confident, the whole idea was a bit overwhelming, I only lasted about half an hour.”

By 2018 she’d shed her reservations about the group she’d turned her back on and had sufficient confidence to return to it.

“By then I knew people in it so I was okay. It’s a great crew, a mix of young kids and older teenagers.

“At first I was the only one in Te Arawa swim squad with a disability, Henk grew their inclusion into the team, he is always advocating for people with disabilities. Now it is part of what Te Arawa  Swimming Club stands for. It’s a really welcoming environment he and the team behind him have created.”

She’s now coaching three young para swimmers with various disabilities.

“When I first started coaching para swimmers I started with one young boy, Liam, now we have a small squad of four mighty para swimmers.” 

Competing in her first swimming nationals overwhelmed Siobhan.

“We were in this huge building in Auckland, the Millennium Pool, there were so many paralympian athletes there, people like Olympians Sophie Pascoe, Rebecca Dubber and Cameron Leslie. They fired me up with the legacy they had made for themselves, that really inspired me to grow in para sports.”

Out of the pool

Greupink encouraged her involvement in Parafed, the organisation which helps develop opportunities for those with physical disabilities. Siobhan is now its Bay of Plenty’s youth ambassador. “It involves being a role model for young kids to get involved in para sports, I wish more would.” 

With her Parafed role she attempts to attend all the events she can.

On Rotorua’s Halberg whanau day she oversaw the wheelchair basketballers. “I hadn’t done overseeing wheelchair basketball before but I was on the court with them talking through their manoeuvres. 

“With Parafed I’ve had the chance to get involved with a variety of sports, I’ve been involved in bocce, wheelchair basketball and wheelchair rugby. That’s so different from being in the pool, it’s a bit more rough, you go so much faster in the chair. It’s an exciting sport, the first time I played I got knocked out of the chair and popped my tyre, that was really cool.”

She’s unsure whether it was 2017 or 2018 when she first competed in the Halberg Games.

At this year’s she won the top archery title and was second in her division in shotput and discus. 

An Adastra Foundation scholarship gave her entry into a three-day workshop at the Cambridge Velodrome.

“In the have-a-go session I fell in love with cycling in the velodrome and from there I was invited to a camp alongside the development squad. At this camp we got to race   at the Hampton Downs track, I did the fun race, not the proper race. Now as well as swimming I like to do cycling on the side, it’s good cross training.”

With so many commitments she’s rarely home.

Now, a few months short of securing her bachelors degree in sports and recreation at Toi Ohomai, Siobhan admits that for the first time in her life she’s unsure what her future direction will be.

“I have a few possibilities, my dream would be working with the Halberg Foundation or Parafed, otherwise do postgrad study in teaching at primary school level, in the PE department, hopefully.” 

There’s a burning question that must be asked: Does this ball of energy see herself as a disabled person?

“I never did for a long time but I have come to accept that I am and it’s part of who I am. I think it is very important I show this part of myself because it shows other kids with disabilities that you can show that part of yourself and it’s okay to be different. 

I tell them ‘disability is your super power’.”

Her dream for the future?  Dumb question. To compete in the Paralympics of course.

“I’d say this is a dream but my ultimate dream is to push myself as far as I can, if that’s the Paralympics then amazing, but so long as I can inspire others along the way then that’s all I can ask for.”