North Carolina Teen Emma Roberts Swam Her Way To The Nationals Podium And Then The National Team

Emma Roberts and her family scheduled their flight home from the U.S. Paralympics Swimming National Championships in Orlando during the afternoon of the last day of the meet.

That meant they’d miss the finals, but this being Roberts’ first time at nationals they didn’t anticipate her competing for a podium spot. Plus, the 16-year-old and her little brother had school the next day.

When she surprised them all by making the final in the 100-meter freestyle S10, however, Roberts’ family happily accepted the expense of rebooking for a later flight.

“I wasn’t expecting it at all,” Roberts said. “I was really nervous, but my mentality was like, ‘Swim as fast as you can because we pushed back this flight so that you could make it to this race, so make it worth it. And I did.’”

Roberts not only dropped three seconds off her previous best time in the event, but she also finished in second place for a spot on the podium. That was in December, and earlier this month Roberts was named to her first national team.

“I found a picture on (social media) of my reaction immediately after that race, and it’s my favorite picture that I have of myself because I look so shocked,” she said. “I was so excited.”

Roberts, from Asheville, North Carolina, was born with a condition called fibular hemimelia. That can mean a lot of different things, she said, but one way it impacts her is that she has the wrong joint in one of her ankles. As a result the has hyper flexibility in two directions and limited mobility in the other two, so she has to wear a brace to provide stability and keep her from rolling her ankle. She’s also missing an ACL and PCL in her right knee, which also causes instability, and has fused bones in her right foot.

Roberts also for much of her childhood had a limb difference, and for many years had surgery once a year to work toward correcting it.

Although she began swimming as a very young child — her mother swam collegiately for Davidson College in North Carolina — it was hard to get consistently better with the constant stops and restarts. She swam for therapy and rehabilitation, but not competition. But then two years ago she had her final surgery and found that things were different once she stopped having annual setbacks.

“Sophomore year came around and it was the first year ever that I’d been swimming without having any surgery or recovery, and I saw a difference in my times,” said Roberts, who’s now a junior. “I realized I was getting faster, and I was getting really fast. That’s when it clicked in my brain that this was something I should commit to. This was something I should work harder at, and I can get better at this.”

Roberts’ coach with the YMCA Piranhas is Kirk Hampleman, and his son, Pierce, recently began competing in the S14 Para class. When Hampleman asked Roberts if she’d be interested in getting her Para classification and competing, she “thought it was the coolest thing ever.”

She and Pierce both made their Para debuts at the Fred Lamback Paralympic Swimming Open in Georgia in November. Next came nationals.

Roberts is a sprinter. The 100 free is her favorite, followed closely by the 50 free, 100 butterfly, 100 backstroke and 200 freestyle. She learned that she’d made the national team when a friend she met at the competition, Cara Pennington, texted her “congratulations.”

“It was the very end of pre-calculus class, and we were doing homework,” Roberts said. “I had no idea what she was talking about, but I figured it was something on Instagram, so I looked and saw that I’d been named to the team. My best friend is in that class, so I turned around and showed her and we both were freaking out.”

Roberts is an avid reader — she has 500 books on display in her room — who’s also interested in the STEM field. She and her best friend share the No. 1 spot in the class, she said, and they hope to be co-valedictorians. She also coaches young swimmers and loves sharing her passion for the sport.

“What I love most is just the fulfillment that it brings into my life,” she said. “It makes me feel productive, it makes me happy, it makes me feel stronger and more confident in my body. It makes me focus harder in school because I know that I have to go to practice, I have to study, I have to manage my time better. It’s something that really makes my life better. Swimming just fills all aspects of my life and makes me really happy.”

Her goals for the year include getting her international classification and competing at the Para Swimming World Series stop in Indianapolis in April, continuing to set new personal records and competing with her YMCA team at regionals and nationals. She would love to compete at the world championships in Singapore next fall.

Recently, her dreams now include something even bigger: the Paralympics.

“It’s definitely become something I’ve thought about in the last couple weeks,” she said. “It’s not something I ever could have thought about four months ago. It’s a lot to take in, but I’m hoping that if I continue with this that’s where I’ll end up is maybe, possibly, the Paralympics one day.”

Karen Price is a reporter from Pittsburgh who has covered Olympic and Paralympic sports for various publications. She is a freelance contributor to USParaSwimming.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.