By Pat Welter

The sun isn’t even up and Evan Wilkerson is already in the pool.

“When I started the team I really started to enjoy the sport,” Wilkerson said. “It’s a very almost peaceful sport.”

Peace is in the eye of the beholder as the New Wave Swim club of Raleigh swims dozens of laps at Optimist park aquatic center before most people eat breakfast. Of course Wilkerson always has looked at things differently.

“The only way to fail is to quit,” Wilkerson said. “If you quit you’re never going to know what you could have done or what you could be.”

Wilkerson is a rising senior in high school and has far exceeded many expectations for what he could do. He was born visually impaired with a condition called Leber congenital amaurosis.

“I was born with some amount of vision,” Wilkerson said. “It tends to decline over the course of your life.”

Now Wilkerson considers himself almost completely blind. He can see shapes, colors and light perception.

“Usually if the pool is shallow enough I can just make out the lines on the bottom,” Wilkerson said. “If it’s more than ten to twelve feet deep I just see water.”

Watching the New Wave team practice you’d never know Wilkerson was different than the other swimmers except for a couple additions to his lane. At one end is a hose with a sprayer shooting into the water. At the other is his mother, Traci Wilkerson with about a fifteen foot pole.

“Tapping is when the swimmer is approaching the turn and everybody has their own system,” Traci said. “The current trend is called tap and turn where once you tap them they turn right away.”

Tapping helps Wilkerson perform his flip turns on time. The sprayer serves in place of a tapper at the other end, but it’s not always smooth sailing in the water.

“It’s harder to stay straight when I swim,” Evan said. “When I can’t see [the line] I tend to bounce around the lane a lot, I scrape up my shoulders I hit my arms.”

Despite some navigation issues, Evan is still at a state championship level versus able bodied swimmers according to his New Wave coach Zach Murray.

“He does a pretty good job of not letting it affect him,” Murray said. “I know he wants to be an inspiration for other visually impaired swimmers so they don’t have to feel like this sport is a barrier for them. I know our teammates are like, they know a Paralympian.”

Evan will represent Team U.S.A. for this year’s Paralympics in Paris where he will swim the 100 meter backstroke, free and butterfly, possibly a relay as well.

“I guess I’m just grateful to be given this opportunity,” Evan said. “A lot of people especially in the blind community never get this sort of opportunity.”

Evan’s condition is genetic, his older sister, Olivia, is visually impaired as well.

“We didn’t always have great support when they were little,” Traci said. “I just sort of adopted this I’ll show you what they are going to do attitude.”

After the Paralympics which begin August 28th, Evan will finish high school virtually, then take a gap year before attending college. He’s looking at several colleges and hopes one will give him the chance to be on the swim team. He’s proved the doubters wrong every step so far.

“I’ve had a lot of people who have said I’m not going to make it or I’m not going to be successful in life,” Evan said. “Look at me now, I’m about to go to Paris for the Paralympic games.”

“It’s been cool to be able to say ‘yes I can and yes I did.'”

Source: wralsportsfan.com