After Having A Front Row Seat At The 2024 Swimming Trials, Aaron Thomas Is Aiming To Make The Team In 2028

When Hope College freshman Aaron Thomas qualified for the U.S. Paralympic Team Trials this past summer, he knew it was with an outside shot of making the team that would travel to Paris.

But as an up-and-comer in the world of Para swimming, it was an opportunity to gain valuable experience that will help him in the leadup to the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.

“One highlight was that I ended up winning the 200 IM in my classification and got the gold medal, so that was really cool,” said Thomas, a S10/SB9/SM10 swimmer from DeWitt, Michigan. “But the second thing was getting to be in the room when they announced the team. Getting to watch people’s reactions and see how that process worked was definitely a highlight. The tension of who’s going to make it and who’s not was good for me to see so I’ll know what those feelings are like in four years.”

Thomas began swimming, as many kids do, with a local swim team around the age of 8. Born missing three and a half fingers on his left hand, he found that his disability didn’t greatly impact his ability to swim and be competitive as it did with other sports such as football and basketball.

“Once I got in the water and started swimming I never really turned back to any other sport,” he said.

Eventually, he began to recognize the pool as a safe space, where he could just go and swim and not have to think about anything else.

“Swimming gives you a little break from life, almost,” he said.

Thomas didn’t get involved with the Para side of the sport until a few years ago, after he was disqualified for a non-simultaneous two-hand touch on the second day of a multi-event, two-day challenge.

“Which we found out later I can’t physically do (a simultaneous two-hand touch) because my right arm is longer than my left arm,” he said. “We had no idea. But at that point my coach recommended that maybe we look into Para swimming.”

That was in 2021, and after watching parts of that year’s U.S. Paralympic Team Trials for Tokyo, Thomas decided it was something he wanted to try. He earned his classification at the national championships three years ago.

He also continued swimming both with his high school and club teams and committed to Hope College in his home state last fall.

It was around that time that he and his family and coaches started toying with the idea of how an orthotic might help him with his lifting and strength training. Inspired by a device that Canadian Paralympian Arianna Hunsicker, a fellow S10 with a similar disability, uses for weightlifting, Thomas met with doctors and designers at Mary Free Bed Orthotics & Prosthetics + Bionics and they began working on prototypes that would help him grip bars using both hands.

About a month before the trials, and with funding assistance from the Challenged Athletes Foundation, Thomas received the one-of-a-kind device he now calls “Lefty” that fits over his hand and allows him to do pull-ups and hold weights in a way he never could before.

“It’s been a game changer,” he said. “Obviously my left arm was not as strong as my right because I hadn’t been able to use that arm to do anything. It took a couple weeks to feel like it was getting stronger and closer to my right hand, but now it’s finally starting to feel like it’s evening out, which is really huge.”

He’s already seen the impact on his swimming. At a recent college meet, without any tapering because he was also preparing for the recent Para national championships, he still dropped time and swam personal top-five times in each of his events.

“I think lifting has been a big part of it,” he said. “I’m feeling stronger in the water.”

Thomas’ strongest event is the 200 IM S10. It’s the event that qualified him for the trials earlier this year, the event he won at the trials and the one in which he also won the silver medal in the most recent national championships. But he also favors distance events such as the 400 free, which was removed in his classification at the Paralympics in Paris but will be held at the upcoming world championships.

While Thomas — who’s an engineering major now leaning toward going into the prosthetics field after his experience with Lefty — will continue to commit to swimming with his able-bodied peers, he also hopes to qualify for the Para world championships team this summer as he works toward his dream of competing at the Paralympics in Los Angeles.

“The first time I did a Para meet it dawned on me that I was swimming with people like me,” he said. “I felt like I was at home with Para swimming. That was really cool. And also, before I went to my first nationals, I would always kind of hide my hand. I wasn’t as confident about it. But since I’ve been in Para swimming it’s helped me be more confident about my disability. I don’t hide it anymore.”

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.