For Sydney Fowler, being an athlete has always been part of who she is.
Growing up in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, Fowler was a competitive volleyball player who dreamed of continuing her athletic career in college. At 13, those plans suddenly changed when a staph infection compressed her spinal cord. After two emergency surgeries, Fowler was paralyzed from the chest down.
Her journey from that moment to rediscovering herself as an athlete was recently featured in PEOPLE Magazine, which shared how Fowler found new ways to pursue the competition and community she had always loved.
Six months after her injury, Fowler attended the Shepherd Center’s Adventure Skills Workshop, where she was introduced to a new world of adaptive sports. She tried activities including water skiing, swimming, rock climbing and tennis. The experience helped Fowler realize that becoming paralyzed did not mean leaving her identity as an athlete behind.
Years later, that realization led her to wheelchair tennis. Fowler initially connected with Clemson University’s adaptive sports program because of her interest in water skiing. During a visit, however, Clemson coaches recognized her athletic potential and introduced her to the possibility of competing in wheelchair tennis.
Fowler attends Anderson University and competes as an affiliate player with Clemson’s wheelchair tennis team. The opportunity has allowed her to experience something she had dreamed about long before her injury: competing in college as part of a team.
And Fowler is still dreaming bigger. Along with continuing to challenge herself through adaptive sports, she has set her sights on one of her biggest goals yet — representing the United States in wheelchair tennis at the Paralympic Games.
Fowler’s journey in wheelchair tennis has also been supported by the Southern Tennis Foundation as a recipient of its Wheelchair Collegiate Scholarship. Her story reflects what can happen when athletes have opportunities to continue competing, growing and pursuing the goals that matter to them.
The path may look different from the one Fowler imagined as a young volleyball player, but her dream of being an athlete never disappeared. Instead, she found new ways to keep competing, and new dreams to chase.
Read More About Sydney’s Journey
Watch Sydney’s video in the PEOPLE Magazine feature.
