COMMUNITY SPORTS: Golden boy: No challenge is too great for local Paralympic champion

By RICK HOFF - Staff Writer | Thursday, October 23, 2008 11:21 PM PDT ∞

Del Mar's Roy Perkins Jr. works out at the La Jolla YMCA after returning from the Paralympics last month in Beijing, where he won a gold medal in swimming. (Photo by John Koster - For the North County Times)

DEL MAR ---- Waiting in the blocks in the same building where Michael Phelps earned Olympic glory, Roy Perkins Jr. needed to remind himself that he had a race to swim.

"The Cube was just amazing," Perkins said of the 18,000-seat National Aquatics Center, the swimming palace more familiarly known as The Water Cube, which recently hosted the Summer Olympics in Beijing.


View a slide show

Just two weeks after Olympians from around the world completed competition in their Games, the Paralympic Games took over the same venues.

Perkins, an 18-year-old resident of Del Mar, earned the trip to China as a member of the U.S. Paralympic Elite swim team. The five-week journey included 10 days of training at Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa before the Paralympics began on Sept. 7.

"I was a little nervous when I first saw the Cube," Perkins said. "But then it felt like home."

Nine days of swimming in the facility can do that, and the home away from home treated Perkins pretty well, beginning with a bronze medal in the 100-meter freestyle on the first day of competition.

"I was hoping to get a medal in that event, but that was a hard race," Perkins said.

On the fourth day of competition, Perkins competed in the 50 butterfly, an event he admits he "expected to win." Initially, it appeared that would not be the case, as the lead pace was set by swimmers from Brazil and China.

Watching from stands with as much composure as she could muster was Perkins' mother, Jana.

"At one point, I didn't know if he could pull it out," Jana Perkins admitted. "Usually, by the halfway mark, he's pulling ahead. But this time he was still in third place."

And not to be denied.

"Then he did his usual chase from behind," said the proud mom.

The winning time of 35.95 seconds was a personal best for Perkins, and good for the gold medal.

"I was hoping for a little better time, though," said Perkins, who got just that later in the competition when he clocked a 34.29 during his leg of the medley relay.

Having taken a short break from competition since returning from China, Perkins will be back in the water on Sunday for the 15th annual San Diego Triathlon Challenge, an annual event that raises funds for the Challenged Athletes Foundation. Perkins will be competing in the 1.2-mile swimming leg at La Jolla Cove for a relay team that will include cyclist Dean Wagner and runner Roy Perkins, who is Roy Jr.'s dad.

Born without hands or feet, Roy Jr. will be one of 136 challenged athletes among the total of 650 athletes competing on Sunday. The half-Ironman distance course also includes a 56-mile bike ride that ranges into North County and a 13.1-mile run.

Last year's event was canceled because of the wildfires that ravaged San Diego County, but there was still enough money raised to fund 625 athlete grants valued at more than $1 million.

"The cool thing was that we still raised enough money for all those grants, even though the event had to be canceled," said Roy Perkins Sr., who has served as director of development for the Challenged Athletes Foundation for nearly four years since he and his family moved to the San Diego area from Washington D.C. "It amazing how far the foundation has come in 15 years."

The same could be said of Roy Perkins Jr.'s progress as a swimmer. He began his athletic career as a tandem cyclist with his father, but after learning to swim at age 12, Roy Jr. found a new world in the water. He began to compete with the San Diego-based Peninsula Aquatics club team.

"At first, the hard part was getting to practice every day, and just being motivated," Roy Jr. admitted.

It was at the 2004 U.S. Paralympic Trials in Minnesota that the Perkins family realized they had a champion swimmer on their hands.

"He was always athletic," Jana Perkins said of her son. "Soccer, ping-pong, anything, he would pick it up pretty quick. But we just didn't know how much of a good swimmer he was."

After qualifying for the U.S. Paralympic Elite team, Roy Jr. went on to win a gold medal in the 50 fly and a bronze medal in the 200 individual medley at the International Paralympic Committee world championships held in December 2006 at Durban, South Africa. That year he was also named San Diego's challenged athlete of the year by the San Diego Hall of Champions.

In Paralympic competition, athletes are allowed to use various prostheses for cycling and running competitions, but not for swimming. That hasn't seemed to slow down Roy Jr., who graduated last spring from The Bishop's School in La Jolla, where he competed on the swim team his junior year.

"Roy is just an all-around good kid and an incredibly dedicated swimmer," said Bishop's boys swimming coach Dana Pierce, who also taught Perkins in his math class. "He fit in real well with an able-bodied team, and he competed in the standardized events such as 100 fly, 200 free and even the 200 IM. And he did pretty well against the other swimmers."

Pierce said Perkins' even-keeled demeanor helped create a positive atmosphere around the pool.

"It was just an inspiration to get out there with someone like Roy, and to have other kids exposed to it," Pierce said. "When the other kids begin complaining about the practices being too long or it being too cold, all they have to do is look over at Roy on the deck, and he doesn't complain at all."

Nor did his time commitment to swimming keep Roy Jr. away from the books. While at Bishop's, he was named to the USA Swimming Scholastic All-America team three times, achieving the criteria that includes a 3.5 grade-point average and meeting standardized times in individual swim events.

Roy Jr. will take his academic and athletic talents to Stanford University, where he will enroll as a freshman next fall. In the meantime, he will continue to help raise funds for the Challenged Athletes Foundation. He recently reached the $180,000 level in lifetime fundraising for the CAF.

By medaling at this year's Paralympic Games, Roy. Jr. also earned the right to be named to the U.S. Elite team again for 2009. As a member of the team this year, the perks included a visit to the White House and a parade at Universal Studios, where Perkins was the recipient of a hug from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"And we had a chance to see a Redskins game while we were in Washington," said Roy Jr., referring to his favorite football team. "It's too bad they had to lose to the Rams."

But the Redskins have since found a way to get back on the winning track. The same could be said for one of their young fans in Del Mar.

Contact staff writer Rick Hoff at (760) 7403545 or rhoff@nctimes.com.