Nearly a dozen years ago, in her role as U.S. commissioner on disabilities, Deborah McFadden stumbled upon a small girl in a stark Russian orphanage.
Of all the children she encountered, the red-headed, freckled child — born with spina bifida and pulling herself around on her stomach — was one McFadden could not forget when she returned home.
After opening an agency to facilitate the adoption of physically handicapped children to families in the United States, McFadden adopted Tatyana and brought her home to Clarksville.
She immediately got the then-6-year-old involved in athletics through the Bennett Institute in Baltimore. Tatyana, who had learned to walk on her hands at age 3, was a natural.
Fast-forward to today. McFadden is an impatient mom fighting the Maryland high school athletic bureaucracy that is attempting to keep her 17-year-old wheelchair athlete from competing alongside other children.
She jumps in with a story about a race last year.
“Tatyana came home from a practice and said the coach told everyone to be back at the school the next day to take the bus down to a meet at C.H. Flowers,” Deborah McFadden said. “So I drove Tatyana to school, got her on the bus and told her Iwould meet her down there. At this point, Tatyana had only been allowed to participate in so-called exhibition races, going around the track alone, by herself. At Flowers, though, the officials put her in a heat with other kids and let her run alongside them.”
Tatyana’s time was not measured against the other runners, and she did not earn any team points, but she felt the emotion and thrill of competing in a varsity high school meet.
“For the first time, [I felt] like I was part of the team and not an outsider,” Tatyana said.
“The crowd went crazy cheering,” said Deborah McFadden. “But what I remember is the phone call to her grandfather in Ohio later. He had asked her how it went and she said, ‘Granddad, I got to go on the bus with my teammates and race like everyone else. It was the best day of my life.’ ”
Civil rights struggle on the fast track
Tatyana McFadden gently rocked in the outside lane and crouched low as she waited for the starter’s gun to fire.”
Last year, Howard County allowed Tatyana to wheel her specially designed racing chair around the track — by herself — at “exhibition races” during county meets.
“It was lonely being out there,” she said. “I felt like an exhibit.”
The state never attempted to include McFadden — or any other potential wheelchair athletes — in events last year.
This season, Tatyana sought to compete — and this is important to her — alongside, but not against, able-bodied athletes. Why should she be singled out from everyone else, her mom asked, when room could be made in one of the heats with other student athletes?
Howard County officials said her inclusion would fundamentally alter the competition and posed a safety threat to other runners. Both charges were shown to be unfounded.
The McFaddens filed a lawsuit, citing the U.S.American Disabilities Act, and said Howard County was in essence, treating Tatyana as a separate class of student and therefore not equally.
On April 17, U.S. District Judge Andre Davis agreed. He granted an injunction requiring the county to include her in heats with other student athletes.
The judge also ruled that Tatyana’s performances should count in a wheelchair division, apart from the able-bodied runners, and she would earn one team point for each event in which she races.
Atholton’s new head coach, Dwight Bowler, has two of his own girls on the team. He recognizes Tatyana, intentionally or not, is a good influence on her teammates at practice.
“I think in one way, she’s just an inspiration because she is out there working hard,” Bowler said. “I know she pushes some of the boys, too. They don’t like to see any girl out there ahead of them on the track.”
