Source: Jessica Heims
If you’ve ever been lucky enough to see Jessica Heims throw a discus, it’s hard to believe she hasn’t been doing it all her life. Her prosthetic and the discus seem like extensions of her body, everything working perfectly in sync as she whirls around the circle before the discus slips powerfully from her fingers in a burst of speed and a whipping blond braid. It’s easy to forget that before this powerful athlete, there was a curious girl with a pink Minnie Mouse prosthetic. It’s hard to imagine that the lanky teenager with the Cedar Rapids t-shirt and yellow and black “Go Hawks!” prosthetic is the same graceful woman who now is a 3-time Paralympian.
But behind every athlete is a child who was given a chance to fall in love, and Jessica was no different. In 2010, Jessica’s parents packed her and her two sisters into the family van for a special family vacation.
This year, the family vacation wasn’t a waterpark or national park, but a track and field meet for children with physical disabilities. Jessica’s mom had found out about the meet on Facebook, but had very little information: Jessica was the only amputee at her school, which served all the surrounding towns. There wasn’t anyone local to turn to for answers about raising a child with an amputation, much less getting her involved in adaptive sports.
The Heims family figured if the meet was a flop, they would just find something else to do. She and her whole family knew they had made the right decision as soon as they had arrived. At only eleven years old, Jessica had become accustomed to the feeling of running to catch up: she never wanted to be any different from her friends, and she wanted to run right alongside them. But often, her leg wouldn’t let her keep up, and she struggled to do the same things her able bodied friends could, especially when it came to sports.
Here, at the small meet in Oklahoma, she realized she didn’t need to run after anyone. The playing field had been leveled, and now she could run alongside other children who moved like she did, cheered on by families who understood what her family had already been through.
Jessica looked down, and realized she’d left her heart out on the track. She got fitted with her first running blade not long after, and began the lifelong journey of navigating her dual identity as an athlete competing both in the able bodied and para worlds. At school she trained and competed with her classmates, in the summer she started training and competing with Team USA. In the summer, Jessica never had to explain why a certain workout wouldn’t work for her, or remind a coach about an accommodation she needed. But during the school year, Jessica’s needs were often overlooked amidst the high school chaos. Often her leg couldn’t handle the amount of volume prescribed. Sometimes the rest wasn’t enough for her to remove and wipe her prosthetic before the next set. At meets, the bus might park a long walk away from the track, something that would tire Jessica’s leg out before the meet even began.
Jessica was hurting, injuring herself in an effort to not cause trouble, to be “easy to work with.” Jessica knew she needed to advocate for herself, but how? Sports so often teach young people to work hard, but can they teach young people how to set boundaries around their health and needs?
Bill Callaway, Jessica’s high school coach, taught Jessica a mantra that still rings in her ears when she’s faced with setting a boundary around her health. He taught her to ask herself, “Is this a time to be tough or be wise?” Early on, Jessica had a mentor who taught her that it was not only okay to accommodate for her disability, but that it was the right thing to do. He created the space for her to make good decisions about her health, empowering her to make a choice where before she had felt there wasn’t one. We focus so hard on teaching kids to push, we often forget to teach them how to listen to their bodies, and when the right moments to be wise are. Without these lessons, self advocacy can feel selfish rather than smart, and young women and girls, especially with disabilities, continue to think that their lived experience is less valuable than what’s prescribed on the whiteboard.
But just because Jessica was starting to be able to advocate for herself didn’t make what was coming any easier. Jessica wanted to go to college, and she wanted to continue to compete in track and field: on an able bodied team. She had just competed in her first Paralympic Games in Rio before her senior year of high school, and she felt on top of the world. Surely any college program would be excited to have her, right? She had bags of Nike swag proclaiming that she was a member of Team USA! But phone call after phone call left Jessica feeling defeated. None of the programs she was talking to had experience working with athletes with disabilities, nor did they have any interest in recruiting one.
Jessica made a visit to the University of Northern Iowa, where it was easy to envision herself walking to class, and building a new community. She loved the campus so much, she wanted to attend even if the track and field coaching staff proved as unaccommodating as all the others had been. To Jessica’s surprise, the coaches were open to the possibility.
They didn’t make any false promises, or really any promises at all. They simply said, “We’re willing to learn if you’re willing to teach us.”
So often, we think that allyship has to be perfect. We think we need to know exactly the right thing to do or say before we even try. Jessica had already built so many of the tools she needed to advocate for herself, and succeed no matter what. She knew she had limitations (she’ll never have two ankles!), but the secret to success is focusing on her weaknesses rather than her limitations, and working hard to strengthen areas that can be improved.
She didn’t need a red carpet rolled out for her, she just needed coaches who trusted her, and were willing to work with her to find a way through.
Source: Jessica Heims
I’m so in awe of the ways in which Jessica learned to advocate for herself over and over and over. She had to educate a new set of coaches on what was going to work for her and what wasn’t, all while striving to be a true member of her new team. She had to balance international competition with college coursework through a pandemic. Jessica has had to be wise and patient beyond her years to go back and forth, managing identities and expectations, continuing to learn when to be tough and when to be wise.
There’s always been a place where she just gets to be Jessica, and that’s with her family. We talk a lot about how many sacrifices athletes need to make to get to the top and stay there, but we don’t often talk explicitly about the equivalent sacrifices that are required from an athlete’s inner circle. Jessica spoke gratefully about how her sisters spent their vacations going to track and field meets or on trips to the prosthetist. She talks about how her parents always advocated for her while never making her feel like a burden.
When I asked Jessica about her favorite Games experience, she said an all time highlight was getting to see her family shortly before competing in Rio, her first Games. She felt like she was in a slow motion movie scene as she ran to hug them, realizing as she did so how special it was to share this moment with all the people who had helped her get there.
She also felt an overwhelming feeling of unity: her many worlds were, finally, one.
Her family, her childhood, all of her struggles and trials were wrapped up in the magical embrace of elite international athletics. As she toed the line to run her Paralympic debut, she could see her family up in the stands. Here she was, almost 5,500 miles from Cedar Rapids, but it felt like home.
About Parity, a Group 1001 Company
Minority-founded in 2020, Parity's mission is to close the gender income and opportunity gap in professional sports. By developing high-impact collaborations between brands, professional women athletes and their fans, Parity has proudly put more than $3.5 million in the pockets of women athletes, attracting dozens of brands to the movement in the process. The platform offers connections to more than 1000 women athletes from 80+ sports, including well over 200 Olympians and Paralympians. For more information on how to tap into the rapidly rising influence and popularity of women athletes, visit https://paritynow.co or follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Threads.
