Jul. 21—GOSHEN — Sam Grewe has one last goal to check off his checklist.
“A gold at the Paralympic Games is pretty much the only thing I haven’t grabbed yet,” Grewe said.
Grewe has been one of the more decorated U.S. Paralympic athletes the last six years. He’s won the gold medal in high jump at three-straight World Championships and brought home a silver medal at the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Now, the Middlebury native has his sights set on winning the gold on the world’s biggest stage next month in Tokyo, Japan. He’ll be in the T63 high jump competition, which is for athletes who “have lost lower limb(s) and are competing with prosthesis affected by limb deficiency and leg length difference,” according to the World Para Athletics website. Grewe is scheduled to compete on Tuesday, Aug. 31 at 6:00 a.m. EST (7:00 p.m. in Tokyo).
“It feels more personal now because that’s the last thing for me to really check off,” Grewe said. “I think I’ve set myself up to jump really well and hopefully take home gold.”
A gold medal at the upcoming Paralympic Games would cap off a 10-year odyssey for Grewe.
GREWE’S JOURNEY
Grewe’s road to Paralympic superstardom has been well documented. Born able-bodied, Grewe grew up playing football, basketball and soccer in the Middlebury area.
“Sports was my life,” Grewe said.
Things changed for Grewe, though, when he started feeling discomfort in left knee in 2011. Initially, he and his parents thought it was just growing pains, given Grewe had grown eight inches that year alone. The pain kept amplifying, however, and so his parents took him in to get an X-ray.
On Christmas Eve 2011, a fist-sized tumor on Grewe’s femur was found. He was immediately pulled out of school and began chemotherapy immediately. Grewe went through 21 total rounds of chemo, which consisted of week-long hospital visits for treatments.
About four months into chemotherapy, Grewe was presented with two options for his leg: salvaging his limb by putting an artificial knee in, or amputating the leg completely.
Grewe chose option two.
“One of the things that the doctor mentioned in that was that the artificial joint would be extremely fragile,” Grewe explained. “I wouldn’t be able to return to sports at all because any sort of pounding on it or even just biking could break the joint. So, as a result, I opted to go through with the amputation at 13 years old because I thought it gave me the best chance at returning to sports.”
The amputation worked. Grewe is cancer free and was able to return to sports, making the freshman basketball team at Northridge High School in the 2013-14 season. He would also go on to play lacrosse and football at the high school before finding his true passion — high jump — in 2015.
INSTANT SUCCESS
In his first year participating in the sport of high jump, Grewe found success at one of its highest levels, winning the 2015 World Championships in Doha, Qatar at just 17 years old. He recorded a jump of 1.81 meters (5 feet, 11 inches), which was a personal record for Grewe at the time.
Grewe initially started high jumping without a coach, but began working with Goshen College’s high jump coach, Kyle Mishler, in the summer before the world championships began. Grewe then shocked the world — and himself — by winning the world title in Qatar.
“The first world championships came as a massive surprise to me, Kyle and everyone else just because I was shocked to make the team in general,” Grewe sad. “Going into the competition, I think I was seeded either last or second-to-last. So, my ambitious goal was to just not get last place. But as we started jumping and as things started kind of going on, the adrenaline was going and all of the things Kyle had taught me in the past couple of months started to really click.”
Mishler, an accomplished high jumper at Goshen College before starting his coaching there, knew that Grewe was a good athlete when they started working together. The win in Qatar, however, took things to a new level for Grewe.
“That first year in 2015, I definitely didn’t expect a world championship,” Mishler said. “I was at work when that was happening, just kind of following along the live results on the computer. I was shocked, the heights I kept seeing. Definitely after that first world championship, everything started coming together.”
Grewe rode the momentum from the 2015 World Championships into the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio. While he performed well, India’s Mariyappan Thangavelu had the best day of his career. As a result, Grewe finished with the silver medal with a jump of 1.86 meters (6 feet, 1 inch).
“Getting silver was great, but yeah, coming off of being first (in 2015), it was kind of like, ‘Well, shoot, I would really like to switch those two because I’d really like to win gold at the much bigger event,'” Grewe said. “That being said, it wasn’t my best day of jumps at Rio, and the guy who beat me jumped incredibly well; I don’t think he’s jumped really close to that since.”
Grewe rebounded from a sub-par Games performance by winning another world title at the 2017 World Championships in London, his second-straight championship at the worlds. He followed that up with wins at the 2019 Parapan American Games in Lima, Peru and another world title at the 2019 World Championships in Dubai, UAE. He set a world record with a leap of 1.9 meters (6 feet, 2 inches) in Peru and almost eclipsed 1.91 meters in Dubai, but fell just short.
While his personal best height hasn’t increased by much, Grewe believes his baseline jump height is way ahead of where he was at in 2016.
“My base level of what I can consistently jump, even on a bad day, has gone up quite a bit,” Grewe said. “I’ve got the foundations of high jump so much secured now compared to where I was in 2016. A bad day in 2016, I might not clear 5’6″, but on a bad day today, I can still consistently clear 6-foot. That’s the difference between medaling and not medaling.”
FOCUS ON TOKYO
Grewe qualified for the upcoming Paralympic Games back at the U.S. track trials in June. Since then, he’s been focusing on preparing for Tokyo by practicing at least three days a week with Mishler.
“We always focus on the approach,” said Mishler on what practices look like. “Everyone always likes seeing him bend over backwards over the bar, but when you leave the ground, your trajectory is kind of determined already. So, we just try and focus on getting him in the right positions in the approach so that the stuff over the bar looks the same every time.”
Along with preparing to compete in the Games, Grewe is also getting ready for medical school. After graduating from the University of Notre Dame in May, Grewe will be beginning medical school at the University of Michigan on August 2. He and his girlfriend, Mady, are moving to Ann Arbor this week ahead of classes beginning the first week of August.
“I spend a lot of the day right now preparing to go to Michigan,” Grewe said. “Mady and I have some sort of pre-class modules that we’re doing with a bunch of stuff. … Practice only takes up so much of the day, but I can’t really do anything in the time leading up to it because I want to be fresh for practice. It really just varies by day.”
These Paralympic Games will be unlike any other major competition Grewe has been apart of, as no fans will be allowed to watch due to a COVID-related state of emergency being declared in Tokyo. In 2016, Grewe’s family and close friends made the trip to Rio for the Paralympic Games, but they won’t be allowed to this year.
Grewe is scheduled to fly to Japan by Aug. 24. He’ll then have to undergo a three-day quarantine period and will be tested for COVID-19 daily, despite being fully vaccinated. Not having the crowd to carry him through an event will also be a much different experience, in Grewe’s mind.
“One of the things Kyle and I talk about all the time is that I don’t get off the ground in practice; I have no adrenaline, it’s hard to get myself amped up,” Grewe said. “But then when I get into that meet-like setting where I have that competitive nature and I have the fans, that’s when I really start jumping. … It’s definitely such a bummer because that’s such a big part of making the environment. It’s the right decision, and I’m not going to be the one to complain because the Games are taking place.”
As the days countdown to Grewe competing, Mishler’s nervousness levels rise. The coach also knows though that Grewe tends to rise to the occasion for the big meets like the Paralympic Games.
“That’s one of the hardest parts about being a coach, is that I can’t help at all, especially not being there with him in Tokyo,” Mishler said. “A lot of nerves, a lot of excitement; hoping things go well. He’s always performed well in big competitions, so I’m sure he will this time as well. Just looking forward to it.”
With high expectations and pressure on him to succeed in Tokyo, Grewe is just focusing on the things he can control.
“I don’t want to set my goal of winning a gold medal; rather, I try to set a goal of a certain height,” Grewe said. “If I jump that certain height and I don’t win gold, then so be it; that other guy jumped higher. What I’m doing is I want to set a goal for a height that I think I can jump and put me in very good contention for a gold medal. And so, that’s kind of what I’m doing going forward.
“You can’t control what anyone else does. If they have a really good day like it happened in Rio, then that’s what happens. But yeah, gold is what I want to win, and that’s the last thing on my checklist.”
Austin Hough can be reached at austin.hough@goshennews.com or at 574-538-2360. Follow him on Twitter at @AustinHoughTGN.