Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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40 MAY 2020 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED ND SPORTS BY TODD D. BURLAGE S am Grewe meticulously planned out his entire 2019 athletic calen- dar all the way back in 2016 to help map a course that would ultimately take him to Tokyo this August as a high jumper at the 2020 Summer Paralympic Games. And for the first three years and seven months, his plan unfolded perfectly. Fresh off of winning gold medals at the Pan American Games last August and another at the 2019 World Para Athletics Championships in Novem- ber, Grewe — a 21-year-old Notre Dame senior, a cancer survivor, a partial amputee and an inspiration — was the odds-on favorite to strike even more gold in Tokyo. The quest for his first Paralympic gold was speeding along until corona- virus precautions drove the decision March 24 for a one-year postponement of the 2020 Summer Paralympics and the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. "It's totally disappointing because it is something I have been working the last four years for," said Grewe, who took home a silver medal at Rio in 2016, his first Paralympics appearance. "Right after Rio, it was all Tokyo prep." In addition to Grewe's place in the Paralympics, several other current and former Irish athletes were forging their paths to the 2020 Summer Olym- pics, including marathoner Molly Se- idel ('16), and fencers Mariel Zagunis ('07), Gerek Meinhardt ('14) and Lee Kiefer ('17), all of whom had already punched their tickets to Tokyo. A handful of other Irish fencers — all of whom took the school year off at Notre Dame to better train for the summer games — also had their journeys abruptly ended. Four years ago, six Notre Dame athletes claimed medals in Rio. This marked the first time the Olympic Games were postponed. The 1916, 1940 and 1944 games were all canceled because of war. The 1980 and 1984 summer games were marked by worldwide boycotts, but went on as scheduled with less participation. Even as the coronavirus spread rapidly worldwide through Febru- ary and into March, the International Olympic Committee remained stead- fast that its summer games would go on as scheduled. But as athletes faced isolation orders and struggled to find places to train, the IOC responded to growing international pressure and moved the games back one year — the best and only decision, accord- ing to Richard Sheehan, professor of finance at Notre Dame, specializing in sports economics. "Moving the Olympics back a month or two would not address the fundamental problem that things are going to get much worse for an extended period of time," Sheehan explained in an article for the Notre Dame faculty website. "The decision to move the Olympics back a year recognizes that the world faces a problem that is unlike anything that any of us have seen in our lives." For Grewe, there's frustration in waiting another year to compete. But there's also nobody better equipped at diluting disappointment with per- sonal perspective. Faced with a decision eight years ago as a seventh-grader on whether to save his cancer-stricken leg through surgical reconstruction or have it amputated and start a new life with a prosthetic, Grewe and his family chose the latter. "The artificial joints they would have to put in would be too fragile for me to ever return to sports," Grewe explained. "So I decided to go with the amputation just to provide even the slightest option, the slightest pos- sibility, of a return to athletics." In addition to the amputation sur- gery, Grewe underwent 21 sicken- ing chemotherapy treatments for 18 months through almost all of 2012 and most of 2013. "Pretty much bed-ridden, super sick," he said. About three years later, Grewe was playing basketball and lacrosse at Northwood High School in Middle- bury, Ind., and embarking on a journey that would take him all over the world as the best Paralympic high jumper in the U.S., until an invisible enemy changed everything for everyone. "Just have to try and make the best out of it, focus on the things that are most important right now," said Grewe, who while in Tokyo planned to break his own world-record jump of 1.90 meters (6.23 feet), set seven months ago at the 2019 Pan Am Games. "We'll figure out all the rest once all of this blows over." CIVIL WAR AND BREAD LINES OFFER PERSPECTIVE FOR IRISH FENCING COACH The events of March 12 happened so fast that Notre Dame fencing head Summer Games Suspension Delays Irish Olympic Dreams Notre Dame senior Sam Grewe was a favorite to take high jump gold this summer at the 2020 Paralympic Games in Tokyo. PHOTO COURTESY SAM GREWE