Tacoma Athletic Commssion Serving All Schools in Pierce County Since 1942 Dedicated to Sports and Civic Betterment P.O Box 11304, Tacoma, WA 98411 April 2021 • Volume 1, Number 8 Founded in December 1942 Greetings from President Jim Upcoming Meetings April 8 @noon Greetings and welcome to the April 2021 Speaker: TBD Newsletter. We are now in the frst full month of Spring with better weather and April 15 less rain. Evening Meeting @5:30pm May, 13 The Pierce County high schools are moving into the next set of sports programs and the College Athlete Celebration TAC continues to connect with the schools, May, 20 & 5:30pm leagues, and WIAA. June, 10, This month we are continuing the search for the TAC Executive Director/ Secretary to take the duties from Bill White. We have a couple of solid candidates already and there may be others in the near future. Please consider stepping up and joining a committee or perhaps the Exec- utive Committee. As we transition from the COVID 19 year there is a lot of re-focus to accomplish for the TAC. Please join us for the ZOOM meetings this month as the Executive Com- mittee considers when and how we return to in-person meetings. We are looking forward to gathering again, hopefully in the near future. Cheers! Jim The TAC Executive Committee Executive thanks all members for their Committee great support of the Jim Merritt, President Sandy Snider, Past President organization during Terry Ziegler, Finance Willie Stewart, AOY the pandemic. Jay Stricherz, Past President APRIL SPEAKER: MEGAN BLUNK — Determination Leads to International Success BY NICK DAWSON Contributing writer for the Shanaman Sports Museum and a former college sports information director for 22 years in the South Puget Sound region. Reprinted with permission from the March issue of the Tacoma-Pierce County Sports Spotlite— The offcial newsletter of the Shanaman Sports Museum. Become a Sports Museum member and receive their newsletters. It is one of the greatest sports narratives that hard- ly anyone in the Puget Sound has heard. And yet, Megan Blunk’s story speaks to the kind of charac- ter and values that mark all great athletes whose stories make headlines and thrill those of us who follow them. Megan grew up in Gig Harbor playing most every sport that an avid athlete might pursue up through her high school years. She participated in soccer, basketball, volleyball, track & feld and softball during her years at Purdy Elementary, Harbor Ridge Middle School and Peninsula High School, where Megan Blunk represented the USA at the 2014 World Champion- she played soccer, basketball and fastpitch. It was ships in Toronto. in 2008, just a month short of her graduation, that tragedy struck. break basket or blast a soccer ball into the back of a net was gone. With that came this realization: “You She was a passenger on a motorcycle driven by a don’t have as much time as you think you do.” friend when the motorcycle careened off the road into a cement barrier and plummeted down a 30-foot em- The regret for all the things that Megan had been bankment, breaking 18 of Megan’s bones and paralyz- holding back before the accident began to consume ing her from the waist down. her mind with the fear that she may never get a second chance. As days turned into weeks, months and years, Megan now faced the nightmare scenario of living a the reality that she may never walk again hit her harder life without use of her legs. and harder. “The honest truth, and it is actually quoted in a news- Upon fnding wheelchair basketball at her local YMCA paper interview I did from the hospital, was that this a year after the accident, she saw it as her second happened for a reason and that it was going to make chance and was determined to not let her mind get in me stronger,” she said. “I just didn’t know in what way her way as it had in the past. Megan’s focus from the that stronger was going to be. I thought I was going to beginning was to make sure she learned all the lessons walk again.” the accident had to teach her and to turn the tragic event into something that was worth the mental and This new disability was, in essence, a physical man- physical pain she felt from it. Megan was determined, ifestation of the mental and emotional fght against she said, “to do something that is bigger than I ever depression that she had been waging for years. “I had would have done before the accident.” already been fghting hard not to waste my life,” she said. For this outstanding athlete, the biggest opponent Did she ever. was her own mind. “I was always in my head, holding myself back and always trying to fght that and get to a Her lifelong love of sports had a new outlet, and an place where I wanted to be.” exciting new world opened to Megan. It also gave her two goals to shoot for: earn a college wheelchair bas- Suddenly, her physical ability to run and score a fast ketball scholarship and play in the Paralympic Games. APRIL SPEAKER continued Megan went from an everyday pandemic forced a cancellation wheelchair, which severely limited of the 2020 Summer Paralympic her on the court, to a borrowed Games in Tokyo. While that compe- basketball wheelchair from Seattle tition has been rescheduled for Aug. Adaptive Sports, and eventually to 24–Sept. 5, 2021, Megan, in addi- a custom ft chair from the Chal- tion to two of her other USA team- lenged Athletes Foundation, which mates, made the incredibly diffcult she says changed her life immense- decision to not continue to 2021 ly. with the rest of the national team. The difference between an every- But basketball is not the only sport day wheelchair and a top-level cus- in which Megan has enjoyed inter- tom basketball wheelchair, Megan national achievement. Even before said, is like “Running, skipping, she won a Paralympic gold medal jumping and dancing. It’s a freedom with the national women’s wheel- that these kids who grow up with chair basketball team, Megan found disabilities should feel. You pull success away from dry land. with one arm and you spin with ease like a ballerina.” After a year of living away from home and of training and playing with her college teammates, Me- By 2011, Megan had earned a Megan Blunk during tryouts for the Parapan scholarship to play wheelchair bas- American Games in Peru in which the USA gan returned to Gig Harbor in the ketball at the University of Illinois team won the Silver. summer of 2012 where she contin- at Urbana Champaign. While at ued “facing everything I couldn’t do Illinois, she was the 2012 National anymore. I felt like an outsider and Wheelchair Basketball Association All-Rookie Award it made me sad,” she said. To stay busy and motivated, and 2016 NWBA Academic All-America and Sports- and following up on a tip from a woman whose house manship Award recipient. she used to clean, Megan took up kayaking at the Gig Harbor Canoe and Kayak Club. After some early dips She graduated from the University of Illinois with a in the harbor while working out one or two times a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 2014 and with a day, Megan found that she was at ease — and fast — master’s degree in social work in 2017. In doing so, on the water. Megan became the frst in her family to earn a college degree. She did the same thing the following summer. “It led me to amazing places and great things,” she said. In the years since discovering wheelchair basketball at the Y, Megan has played an integral role in the success Within a year the former Peninsula High multi-sport of the United States athlete won women’s wheelchair silver medals in basketball national the trunk and team, including gold arms classif- medal performances cation in both at the 2015 World kayak and Cup in Germany, the outrigger races 2015 ParaPan Ameri- at the 2013 ICF can Games in Toron- Canoe Sprint to, and at the 2016 World Champi- Paralympic Games in onships in Duis- Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. burg, Germany. A year later She, like many hun- and with barely dreds of adaptive ath- three weeks of letes from the United training behind States and around the her because world, suffered great of basketball, Megan placed disappointment when Megan Blunk competed with San Diego’s military wheelchair basketball team, The the global Covid 19 Wolfpack, as the frst and only female on the team. fourth in both APRIL SPEAKER continued events at the 2014 championships in Moscow, Russia. Megan, a sponsored athlete and motivational speaker, returned home in the past year. Once Covid restrictions are lifted, she hopes to fnd a role coaching and working with disabled athletes, much like she did following the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio. She has much to offer. “A lot of people who grew up with disabilities didn’t have opportunities,” said Megan, who made her own during what for many would have been the darkest of times. “There are lots of people out there with disabilities and I am determined to show them that their life is not over, it’s just a different way.” Please Volunteer to Support the TAC. The organization needs a frst and second vice-president.