Coan 'meant to be in the water'

McKenzie Coan has amassed her fair share of Paralympic medals - 7 to be exact - throughout her swimming career. That doesn’t include the other 19 she earned from the World Championships and Parapan American Games combined.

Yet, as Coan, 28, stood atop a podium in Paris after medaling in the 400m freestyle earlier this month, the silver placed around her neck seemed to weigh a little more than any medal that preceded it.

“You know, I had hoped I would do well, but I knew how hard this last year in particular has been. Training hasn’t quite been what I would’ve liked for it to be,” Coan told The Northeast Georgian. “So to get up on that podium after everything I’ve been through … I couldn’t ask for more.”

Coan was born in Toccoa, Ga. but raised in nearby Clarkesville. At 19 days of age, she was diagnosed with osteogenesis imperfecta, more commonly known as brittle bone disease.

The condition can cause bones to fracture easily. Coan herself has broken over 50 in her lifetime.

Doctors listed for McKenzie’s parents - Marc and Teresa - all the things their daughter wouldn’t be able to do in life. She’d be unable to sit, stand, walk, crawl or even hold her head up on her own. To new parents, the news had a devastating impact. At first.

“Luckily I have very determined parents, and they decided that wasn’t going to be my future,” said Coan.

So the family put together a plan. At six months old, McKenzie had her first physical therapy appointment at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. For the next four years, she would make the trip for sessions three times per week. At that point, realizing her therapy was getting repetitive, doctors decided to mix things up and add swimming to Coan’s treatment plan.

By pure coincidence, a new aquatic center (Ruby C. Fulbright) was under construction just 10 minutes from the Coan’s home in Clarkesville.

“I always think it’s kind of like fate for this sort of thing,” said McKenzie. “Being able to find an aquatic center just down the road from our house was the biggest blessing. I could be in the water as much as we wanted.”

The Coan’s soon discovered that the aquatic center offered an aqua therapy group for kids. McKenzie enrolled right away, joining other children with special needs for sessions 3-4 times each week.

“I gotta tell you, even though I was so young, I still remember having this feeling of absolute freedom when I first got into the water,” said Coan. “It was like I was meant to be in the water.”

McKenzie was almost six years old by that point. She had developed a comfortable familiarity with maneuvering around in her wheelchair. Still, she recalls, the water offered an immediate reprieve.

At the same time, Coan’s brothers - Grant and Eli - were taking up swimming, too. After excelling in aqua therapy, Coan found herself wanting to join her siblings in the more advanced pool.

“I would look over at them from the baby pool and I’d be like, ‘you know, I feel like I can do that. I feel like I can race the other kids.’ So one day, I got out and told my mom, bless her soul, that I wanted to be in the big pool,” said Coan. “She looked at me and said ‘Okay, let’s do it’.”

The swim coach at the time was Anthony Rayburn, who told Coan that, in order to be on the team, she would have to swim one lap on her own without anyone’s help.

Coan vividly remembers what her mom did next.

“She looks at me and says ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Of course I’m like, yeah, sure, I got this. So she unzips my life jacket and, I’ll never forget this, throws it in the trash. I was like, okay, I guess we’re really doing this.”

Coan didn’t just swim a lap. She swam six. Coaches had to make her get out of the pool. The very next day, McKenzie was on the team.

“I think my favorite part was kind of rolling up and down the deck at swim meets and people would underestimate what I was capable of,” she said. “I absolutely loved diving in and showing them that, just because I was different, it didn’t mean that I couldn’t do what they were doing. In fact, I could do it even better.”

Coan went on to swim collegiately while attending Loyola University Maryland, where she graduated in 2018.

Family matters

The Coan’s are a tight-knit family. McKenzie knows full well what her parents and brothers sacrificed to help get her where she is today. She gets emotional talking about their support.

“It takes a lot to have a sister who has special needs. I know that was a lot for my brothers, and I know that was a lot for my parents,” she said. “Never once did they ever let me feel different, or that I was lesser than, or that I couldn’t do whatever I put my mind to. The only reason I’m even here today is because of them.”

McKenzie has felt the love throughout her Paralympic journey, and at other big meets.

Whether it goes well or not, the very first thing Coan does after finishing a race is scan the crowd to find her family.

With COVID protocols in place at the Tokyo Games in 2021, her routine wasn’t possible. That made this summer’s Paris Games extra special. This time, when she scanned the arena, Coan could spot her family right away.

“They have fat heads of me,” she laughed. “I’m always like, how do you guys even travel with those? Do you put them in a suitcase or do you actually take them onto the plane yourselves?”

Their answer has always been the same: “Don’t worry about it.”

Breaking Free

In 2021, Coan co-authored her own auto-biography, Breaking Free: Shattering Expectations and Thriving with Ambition in Pursuit of Gold.

“Writing Breaking Free was something I had always wanted to do,” said Coan. “I graduated from college and ended up getting an agent. On one of our very first phone calls he asked me what I wanted to do in the future. I named off all these different things and at the end, very hesitantly, I told him I would love to write a book one day. I was so nervous saying it out loud.”

Coan wasn’t expecting ‘one day’ to arrive just a couple years later.

Fortunately, McKenzie’s habit of journaling made for plenty of material to draw from.

“For the first time in my life, (writing) gave me a moment to kind of stop and think about the things I had done,” she said. “I was like ‘wow, that’s actually really cool that I’ve gotten to do all these things and have these experiences.”

More than anything, Coan hopes her book can inspire others facing similar adversity.

“I really hope that someone like me - a little girl in a pink wheelchair - could pick up the book, read it, and know that she could do anything.”

The grind doesn’t stop

Coan has jumped right back into a busy schedule since returning from France. She moved to Boston just this month, following her boyfriend, who recently started medical school in the region.

Coan herself is in the process of applying to law schools near Boston, with hopes of enrolling in the Fall 2025 cycle.

“Just like swimming, law has been a big passion of mine, and I’ve always wanted to be a lawyer,” she said.

As for swimming? McKenzie has no plans of slowing down anytime soon. She’s already back to training and plans to compete at the World Championships in Singapore next year.

The ultimate goal, however, is Los Angeles 2028.

“I think going to a home Games and having that full circle moment would really mean everything to me,” she said. “So I’m definitely not done swimming yet.”

When looking at all she’s been through in her life, Coan knows she wouldn’t have made it through without the proper perspective.

“Something can either happen to you, or happen for you. That’s the way I always look at things,” she said.

“I can’t choose in my life. When I break bones, it just happens. I have no control over that,” Coan added. “What I can control is how I look at it, and how I let it affect me. I can sit here today and confidently say that every single broken bone, and every piece of adversity I’ve ever been through, has gotten me to where I am. For that, I am grateful.”