Going for gold again

Kaitlyn Verfuerth had her eyes set on going to Paris for the 2024 Summer Paralympic Games.

The Paralympic athlete from Port Washington, who competed in tennis in three previous Paralympics, switched to the new sports of canoe and kayak racing and needed time to train to get up to world-class speed in the boats.

She had planned to wait until 2024 to participate in the race events but received a call from her coach in mid-May.

“Hey, do you want to go to Tokyo?” asked Doug Ellery, an Olympic canoeist from Canada.

“What are you talking about?” Verfuerth said.

The 2003 Port Washington High School graduate knew there was a miniscule chance she would be selected for the Paralympic team this year, and the bizarre happened.

At Paralympic qualifying in Hungary in May, one of the U.S. competitors flipped her boat, instantly disqualifying her. Another went outside her lane — another immediate disqualification.

Instead, the fastest times were taken from 2019 — one year before the Paralympics were supposed to be held until Covid-19 caused everything to be pushed back. Verfuerth, who didn’t attend the trials several weeks earlier because she knew she needed more training, qualified.

She talked to her husband Greg Juerin, and they pondered her making the trip for a week. They decided she should go.

“How many athletes get the chance to go to an Olympic or Paralympic games and not really have to qualify?” she said.

Then came the tough part.

“I was still paddling once or twice a week. Then we really ramped it up to once or twice a day,” Verfuerth said.

Geography makes that challenging. 

Verfuerth and her husband live in Gilbert, Ariz., a suburb of Phoenix. She runs a business called Ability360, in which she teaches wheelchair tennis and works as a recreation therapist helping people with illnesses, injuries or disabilities to get back to participating in their favorite sports or activities. She is also finishing work on a master’s degree in recreational therapy.

Right now, tennis isn’t happening. Recent high temperatures in Phoenix have been higher than 100.

“It’s just too hot. You can’t play tennis,” Verfuerth said.

The heat forces Verfuerth to get up every day at 5 a.m. to get on the water when it’s a cool 92 degrees.

“By 8 or 9 (a.m.), it’s 100,” she said.

Forget taking a relaxing dip.

“I’ve fallen in. It’s hot. It’s not really that refreshing at all,” Verfuerth said.

Training that started seven weeks ago has taken a turn to the difficult. “It’s getting tough. I lift three times a week, and I’m on the water 10 times per week,” she said.

Verfuerth was told she has to paddle 70,000 miles before she really learns how the boat works. She isn’t anywhere near that, but she is going to compete in the Paralympics in two races.

Both canoe and kayak races are 200 meters long on flat water, not rapids.

Verfuerth’s best time in 2019 was 1 minute, 6 seconds in the 200-meter paracanoe race. She has it down to 58 seconds and said she needs to shave off four more seconds for a chance to medal.

Her body has transformed to handle her new sport. Swinging a racket and pushing a wheelchair on land is different than paddling on water.

“Just because you’re fast on land doesn’t mean it’s going to transfer to water,” she said. “I’m still working on it.”

One key in paddling, she said, is “finding your catch,” which is how competitors put their paddles in the water and feel the pull of the water and the blade.

“If you don’t get the catch right, you can totally miss the whole stroke,” Verfuerth said.

Besides technique, paddling differs from tennis in other ways.

“Racing is a whole other level. If you screw up on the start, the whole race is over,” Verfuerth said.

In the best of three sets in tennis, “If you have a bad first set, you can always come back and win it,” she said.

While it’s easy to be socially distant on the water, the Covid-19 pandemic created an obstacle when it came to other training. Gyms were closed and athletes wondered if they would be able to compete. The Olympics hung in the balance for a while and, Verfuerth said, athletes go through depression.

Verfuerth said she has loved being on the water since she was a child, even after a car accident when she was 7 broke her back and put her in a wheelchair for life.

Her interest in competitive canoeing was piqued at the opening ceremonies of the 2016 Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro. 

“I happened to be next to the U.S. paracanoe coach,” she said. “We talked about paddling kayaks and canoes. I always had been intrigued.”

The sport was new in 2016, and by 2018 Verfuerth devoted herself to it, saying she had enough of competing in tennis.  She played in the Paralympics in 2004, 2008 and 2016, with her highest finish being fourth in doubles in Beijing 13 years ago. She won gold in singles and doubles at the 2007 Parapan American Games and a bronze medal in the 2014 Copa Americas Cup and played professionally on the UNIQLO Wheelchair Tennis Tour.

“I’ve been playing tennis for a really long time,” Verfuerth said.

Paralympians have switched sports before, she said, but it’s rare.

Verfuerth has her teaching certification and worked for years as a full-time tennis pro in Flagstaff, where she played wheelchair tennis for the University of Arizona and earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology, before starting Ability360 in Phoenix. She is the daughter of Katherine Allen of Port Washington.

Verfuerth is approaching these Paralympics, scheduled for Aug. 25 to Sept. 5, as an underdog.

“I’m a dark horse. People don’t know I’m training a lot. I haven’t been to many races and competed,” she said.

Despite the intense training, Verfuerth is staying mentally loose.

“I don’t have anything to prove to anybody. I really don’t have any pressure. I’m just going to go out and paddle as hard as I can for 200 meters,” she said.

She still plans to compete in Paris in three years. “I still want that medal,” she said.