McKenzie Coan: Paving the Way for the Next Generation

One Games can change an entire generation and provide opportunities.

I was born in June 1996, just shy of the start of the 1996 Games, so I feel very connected to it in that way.

I feel like I was destined to do this — to have a home Games in my home state around the same time I was being born, it seems a little bit like it's destiny.

When I think of Atlanta 1996, I see the possibilities. And BlazeSports took those possibilities and ran with them, educating communities, talking about what the 1996 Games did and telling people, ‘You need to go watch the next Paralympic Games.’

BlazeSports America is really responsible for providing me with my first kind of safe space where I felt like I could be myself. I saw kids who actually looked like me. I had this feeling of freedom in the water. I still have it to this day, every time I get in.

Knowing that my journey started in 1996 at our last home Games, I think qualifying for my fifth Games (at the Paralympic Games Los Angeles 2028) would be the most kind of full-circle moment of my entire life.

LA28 has a bigger opportunity because the Paralympics have never had a bigger platform than they have right now.

When I look back on my career, I hope it inspires the next generation to go out and do what I did.