Profile: Savannah Larson

By Hannah Hecht–Five women in one-piece racing swimsuits, goggles, and swim caps stand lined up behind the starting blocks at the Morningside HPER center’s pool facility. Their faces are fixed in stony concentration and a couple of them are jumping around and stretching to loosen up their arms and legs. A man announces the beginning of the 500 yard freestyle and the starter blows the whistle to signal the swimmers to get up on the blocks.

Most of the swimmers jump onto the blocks with ease, but the Morningside athlete in lane three whose cap reads “Larson” needs a teammate’s help to climb up. She grasps her teammate’s hand and slowly and deliberately takes the two steps up to the starting platform.

“I was born with hip dysplasia and I have club feet,” said freshman swimmer Savannah Larson. “What that means is that I was born without hip sockets and no head of my femur, and club feet is where your feet are severely inverted.”

Once the starting tone goes off and Larson hits the water, she holds her own with every other swimmer. Each stroke surges her forward and her swimming is like a dance: a rhythmic product of years and years of dedication and practice.

“I’ve had 18 surgeries to try and correct these problems and I’ll still have to have surgeries in the future,” Larson said. “I’m just trying to stay positive about that whole thing and swimming really helps me, since I’m still able to exercise.”

Larson sees swimming as something she can do beyond college and the NAIA; she’s in the middle of the process of getting approval to swim in the Paralympics. She’s planning on going to a Paralympic meet this March where a panel will judge her swimming and assign her a physical impairment category. The category will determine which class of impairment she will be able to compete in

“The process to be a Paralympian is a long one, but I think it’s very much worth it,” she said.

One of the most interesting things about Savannah, as a swimmer and, especially as a swimmer with a disability, is that she swims some of the most difficult events in the swimming program: the 500, 1000, and 1650 yard freestyles. That means that in one weekend, she may swim a 10-lap race, a 20-lap race, and a 33-lap race, plus relays.

“One of the things about Savannah is that she’s very strong in her upper body, which is not to say that the sprinters aren’t, but she has more of an endurance-type of stroke,” says head Mustang swimming coach Bryan Farris. “You almost might say that she was born to distance swim, and with the fact that she has some disabilities in her lower body that she has to overcome, she can fit right in with that body type of a distance swimmer.”

Larson says that swimming in college has been her lifelong goal, and she is having an amazing first semester with the Mustang team.

“If I could talk to a little kid right now who was starting a sport, or swimming, or had a physical impairment, I would tell them not to give up on their dreams. My dream was just to swim and to get to swim in college, and I never gave up on that, and my dream came true.”