"Nothing is impossible if you believe in yourself." For most people, that's a cliché. For Vicki Keith and her team of young swimmers, it just might be true. In the 1980s, Keith completed a series of record-smashing swims across the Great Lakes and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for kids with disabilities. But when she announced last summer that she was coming out of retirement at age 44 to complete an open-water, 80 kilometre butterfly swim in Lake Ontario, you would have been forgiven for thinking it was impossible. Keith's goal was to raise money for a desperately needed pool in Kingston, Ont., where she runs a swim program for children with disabilities. She started in 2001 with seven kids and no pool. When the YMCA offered theirs, the Kingston Y Penguins were hatched. One of Keith's Penguins is Harry Bellemare, a teenager with a big smile, a sharp wit and almost no use of his legs. Keith showed him he didn't need a kick to do the backstroke, and within days he was pulling himself through the water. Harry now competes against both disabled and able-bodied swimmers and has a bedroom wall covered in first-place ribbons. Then there's Eva Hogan, 13, who was born with cerebral palsy and came to Keith as a non-swimmer. "Now she's just three seconds short of participating at an international meet," says her proud coach. Keith's gift is being able to help every kid achieve his personal goal, whether it's winning a gold medal or just feeling confident enough to get in the water. "She is aware of every child," says one mom, "and she takes the time to talk to each of them." As for that impossible Lake Ontario swim? It took 63 hours, 40 minutes and a whole lot of cheering from the Penguins lined up onshore, but she finished it, raising over $200,000 and bringing her fundraising total to $1 million for children with disabilities. "At the end I was so completely exhausted that I just broke down in tears. I couldn't have taken another stroke." She pauses for a moment. "Having said that, if I had to take one more stroke, or five more, or 10 more, I would have found it somewhere." Chosen charity: Kingston Family YMCA |
