By Deecon Hill
Sam Grewe at 15 years old was a track and field high jumper in Middlebury, Indiana. His story is motivating because when Sam was in seventh grade his leg had to be amputated due to cancer. When Sam was in the hospital one day a Notre Dame assistant football coach got to know him and then he “adopted” him and he got to see all the players and got to see all there home football games and the players impacted him by showing him that he could play sports again.
Years later he was practicing high jump by himself because he didn’t have a coach. Sam was training for regionals open to everybody after regionals he found out he qualified for nationals then he got a coach named Kyle Mishler. Kyle Mishler was a high jumper at Goshen College and set the school record (6 foot, 8 inches). After Nationals in Minneapolis Sam was qualified to go to the PAN AM games where Sam qualified for the IPC Athletics World Championships where he was the last seeded person there and one of the youngest. Where he won a gold medal in the fall of 2015.
A year later Sam Grewe went to the Paralympics in the fall of 2016 in Rio where he recorded Sam cleared 1.86-meters on his first attempt and came home with a silver medal. Sam lost by 0.03 meters in the Paralympic games by Mariyappan Thangavelu.