Inspirational swimmer prepares to head to world championships

In chlorinated water or on dry land, Hannah Nelson works hard, displays talent and determination and doesn’t let anything hold her back, her coach Kyle Margheim says.

“She is a really supportive person,” the Sioux Falls Swim Team coach said of the swimmer he has coached for more than a year. “She is a great teammate. She’s kind of goofy– she likes to have fun, but she also knows when it’s time to get down to business.”

Nelson, a 20-year-old Augustana University student who grew up in Yankton, is spending the summer getting “down to business” as she prepares to compete in the 2023 World Para Swimming Championships in Manchester, England, from July 31-Aug. 6.

“The Sioux Falls Swim Team has one para athlete, and we can now call her a para Olympic athlete,” said Kristi Baumgartner, who has two daughters on the SFST. “How cool is that — South Dakota representing Team USA. She is an amazing  young lady. The whole team is proud of her.”

Nelson will participate in the 400-meter freestyle race Aug. 2 against 15 to 20 other swimmers. Her classification is S10, indicating she has the least-restrictive physical impairment. Nelson was 11 when her left leg was amputated beneath the knee, about four months after she was diagnosed with bone cancer.

Credit: Team USA

A dancer from the age of 3 to 10 and a swimmer who took her first lessons at age 6 or 7, Nelson didn’t imagine then that she would be in a swimming pool again. After three months of chemo, then surgery, she first needed to heal from the experience.

Nelson joined the swim team when she was 9 after watching them while taking lessons.

“I told my mom, ‘I want to do that,’ and she was terrified. It was a big pool, a deep pool, and she said, ‘OK, honey, maybe in a couple years.’ Then, I actually tried swim, and I loved it, and here we are, still doing it,” Nelson said.

Nelson and her parents, Tom and Theresa, became involved in the world of club swimming. They generally traveled to meets about an hour away in communities like Sioux Falls and Sioux City.

In 2014, her active lifestyle slowed then halted when a playground accident apparently caused pain in her left shin.

At least, that’s what the Nelsons initially thought.

“I thought I had shin splints,” Nelson said. “I got X-rays at the clinic. Then my mom went, no way, it’s not getting any better. It was getting worse. I was not running around anymore; it just hurt so bad.”

A trip to medical doctors in Omaha resulted in the diagnosis of bone cancer in March 2014. A 13-centimeter tumor was discovered in Nelson’s tibia. Her shin had cracked, perhaps from the tumor’s pressure to expand, and was causing the pain.

Tom and Theresa Nelson looked for other alternatives but finally concluded the recommended amputation was the best outcome for their daughter. Surgery took place in June 2014.

‘I’d danced and I’d swim, and I was like, I’m not going to do that anymore,” Nelson recalled. “Mom told me: ‘Honey, don’t worry about that. There’s plenty of things you can still do.’ I was just getting through it, not thinking of sports.”

It stayed that way for several years while Nelson’s former teammates and her coaches encouraged her to try to swim. She attended a home meet in Yankton to cheer them on. When it was over, she watched her ex-teammates frolicking in the pool and said to herself, “You know what, I can still swim.”

And she could, even though her balance was different with just one foot to propel her. That fall, Nelson started attending practice and soon was back competing in meets again. Swimming always made her feel free, just a part of the water and its movement, she said.

As she started getting faster, Nelson began to think about competing in the World Para Swimming Championships. Tentatively at first, then making it a goal.

“As I got faster, I built my confidence, and I was like, I can do this, I totally can do this,” Nelson said.

She totally could and did. At this spring’s Para Swimming World Series stop in Minneapolis, U.S. Paralympics Swimming selected 22 athletes to its roster for the summer games, its 12th edition. Six-hundred athletes from 70 countries will participate.

Nelson has been a member of the SFST since spring 2022 when she moved to Sioux Falls before starting her freshman year at Augustana. Margheim has been her coach since then.

“I casually knew her before that, but March of ’22 is when we officially met and started our swimmer-coach journey,” he said.

Nelson’s selection for this competition is unique, Margheim said.

“I think it’s unprecedented, certainly in the swimming community,” he said. “We’ve had talented swimmers in the past, but none that have gone on to this sort of level of meet before.”

And Sioux Falls’ swimming community is growing. Its numbers dipped during the COVID pandemic’s isolation but have rebounded since then. The city’s only club team now has about 300 members after dropping to about 180.

“Give or take people who have graduated and new swimmers, we have grown about 150 swimmers over the last two years,” Margheim said. “With Augie adding men’s and women’s teams and the University of Sioux Falls has a women’s team, all in the last five or six years, and having Midco (Indoor Aquatic Center) here, we’re more visible as a team. There’s more interest. All that builds excitement for the sport in our community.”

Swimming offers children and teenagers opportunities to travel and compete elsewhere, even if they don’t reach Nelson’s heights, Margheim said. Swimmers can go on to compete collegiately, and Sioux Falls has swimmers of all ages ranked in the top 15 in their races nationally.

“Sometimes, people don’t look at swimming as a very competitive sport or like a lesser sport in a lot of ways,” Margheim said. “But there are so many opportunities in our sport that are unique to our situation here. And it’s a great opportunity for younger kids to create bonds. Our community is so supportive to each other, and kids do value the bonds of friendship.”

Nelson, an accounting major, hasn’t decided whether she will compete at the college level. Right now, her focus is improving her strength and speed in the freestyle, which is her favorite stroke. She likes it so much, in fact, that she can’t name a second-favorite.

“I just like freestyle,” Nelson said.

She practices every weekday, sometimes twice a day. If she doesn’t swim twice, then she’s working with weights. Weekends are her time to rest and sleep.

She will take to the World Para Swimming Championships the same positive attitude that has characterized her life, even after her cancer diagnosis. Her nurses told her they used to hold arm wrestling competitions because they all wanted to be assigned the 11-year-old with a sunshiny attitude.

“You just have to realize that life throws you so many things, be grateful for what you have,” Nelson said. “Be grateful for your health, where you live, your family, what you have around you.”