ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (WSVN) – A life-changing accident could have ended one Florida teen’s athletic dreams. Instead, it gave her a brand-new passion and purpose.
Fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Matthews is turning trauma into triumph, one stroke at a time, nearly a decade after a wrong-way crash.
“I was hit by a drunk driver going the wrong way on the highway,” she said.
Matthews said she can’t remember much from that horrible night in June of 2016.
“I don’t think it really set in until I woke up and I couldn’t feel anything,” she said.
The wreck left Matthews paralyzed from the chest down.
“‘OK, this doesn’t feel right.’ I think it hit when I got into a wheelchair for the first time,” she said. “‘This is the new normal, apparently.’”
Now a freshman at Gibbs High School in St. Petersburg, Matthews has found her passion for swimming thanks to her therapist, who recommended water therapy.
“It kind of just makes me feel like I’m a normal kid in the water, but it makes my body feel like it doesn’t have the weight to it,” said Matthews.
Matthews is competing with other children her age in the pool, and that comes with some obvious challenges.
“It’s definitely tough ’cause I’m trying to catch up when they’re going twice as fast as I am, ’cause they can use their legs, and I have to use my arms,” she said. “So I have to work 10 times harder than everybody else, I feel, but I don’t know. It’s just — that’s kind of what I feel like; I just have to work harder.”
That hard work is proven with the seconds she’s shaved off in the 50-meter freestyle.
“She’s been pretty consistent,” said Andrew Campbell, the teen’s coach. “She dropped seven seconds in one race a couple of weeks ago, which is a significant time drop.”
Campbell said he is inspired by Matthews’ drive.
“Perseverance is really the big thing I want everyone to take away. You know, she was dealt a really bad hand at a really young age and spent most of her life in a wheelchair,” he said. “Now here she is, competing against able-bodied swimmers and going to regionals and hopefully going to states, so it’s a big deal.”
Matthews acknowledged the wheelchair is part of her story.
“It made me realize, be grateful for what you have, ’cause you don’t know how long you’re going to have it for,” she said.
But she’s just a regular teenager, living life on her own terms.
“As long as, if you like doing something, say, ‘Hey, this is something I like doing, and I’m going to keep trying to do it to my best of my new normal,’” she said.
Matthews said she has competed at the Special Olympics, and she may choose to swim competitively in college.