At Franklin Regional Swim Team practices, one swimmer can often be found lagging a bit behind the rest of her group, laboring through drills that her teammates appear to handle with relative ease.
But ask any of the club’s coaches to name their most impressive swimmer, and 11-year-old Destiny Davis of Greenwood is at or near the top of the list.
Davis was born with spina bifida, a birth defect that arises when the neural tube does not close all the way and the backbone doesn’t form as it should, often resulting in damage to the spinal cord and nerves. She wasn’t supposed to ever be able to roll over, sit up or walk without assistance. But she’s been raised to believe that she can do what any other kid her age does, and every time she gets into the pool, she proves it.
Since last fall, Davis has been swimming competitively for the Franklin team — and while her condition may prevent her from going as fast as most of her peers, she continues to move forward, undeterred by any of the obstacles in her path.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title="Story continues below gallery" ]
Click here to purchase photos from this gallery<strong>No pity party</strong>
When she was 18 months old, Davis took steps without the aid of a walker for the first time. That was all that her mother needed to see.
"I’m one of those moms," Kristina Davis said. "So when she took those couple of steps without it, I took the walker and I threw it in the garage, and she never saw it again."
Ever since then, Destiny has been taught to see herself the same as any of her siblings or peers. Her family won’t do anything for her without seeing her at least attempt to do it on her own first.
There are three classifications of spina bifida, with different levels of severity. The mildest, spina bifida occulta, leaves a small gap in the spine but usually results in little to no damage to the nerves; many times, it’s not discovered until adulthood. With the most serious form, myelomeningocele, a sac of fluid forms on the baby’s back near the opening in the spine and the spinal cord is pushed into it, which can result in a loss of feeling in the feet and legs, and it can affect the person’s ability to use the bathroom or move his or her legs.
Davis has meningocele, which falls in between those two extremes. In her case, the spinal cord did not get into the sac that formed near her L4 and L5 vertebrae, but there was still some nerve damage.
Many people who are born with spina bifida use a wheelchair for mobility — and while there is no guarantee that Davis won’t do so eventually, she has thus far never even used crutches to walk. She has leg braces, but she goes without them "99 percent of the time," according to her mother.
Though Destiny will face physical challenges every day, she’ll do so with a determination to do the same things that everyone else does, one that has been drilled into her from the beginning.
"We took the word ‘can’t’ out of her vocab as soon as she started talking," Kristina Davis said. "That’s one word she cannot say at my house."
<strong>Finding her lane</strong>
As soon as Destiny was old enough — about age 6 — to take part in organized sports with her classmates, Kristina Davis started to consider the options. Since Destiny has a shunt in her head to relieve the pressure from fluid accumulation in her brain, sports with an increased risk of head contact and trauma, such as soccer or softball, were ruled out.
They decided on swimming, and Destiny started taking lessons through the Greenwood Gators swim club in her hometown. At first, it was a struggle; she couldn’t keep her hips up, so she would start to sink.
But as she has with just about everything else in her life, Destiny gradually adapted.
"I felt like I could never do it; I felt like I didn’t have confidence," said Davis, who is entering the sixth grade at Clark-Pleasant Middle School. "But when I first started doing it, I was surprised that I could actually swim, because I didn’t think that I could."
She continued on with lessons, first in Greenwood and then through the Hypersonic club in Whiteland. But last year, when the Davises started expressing an interest in getting Destiny onto a team in a competitive setting, they opted to do so in Franklin.
Destiny’s first meet, at Franklin in late October, got off to an unceremonious beginning — she was disqualified in her debut race, the 50-yard butterfly, for not being able to bring her arms all the way up out of the water on her strokes. But she finished her other three races, and during the short-course season her times dropped significantly; in the 50 freestyle, for instance, she went from a 1:39.90 the first time out to a 1:11.69 during the Feb. 17 Day of Power Meet at Lawrence North, where she even earned a ribbon for winning her heat.
"It was pretty cool, because I wasn’t used to it," Destiny said of her achievement.
But finishing first has never been the primary goal for Davis. She’s not in the water for medals or status; she’s competing against herself, and against the battery of physical challenges that she faces every single day.
<strong>Making an impression</strong>
While her teammates win ribbons and other accolades, Davis has been busy winning admirers. In speaking to coaches past and present — whether Amy Beers or Chris Service in Whiteland, or Alec DeWitt or Tony Ressino at Franklin — the refrain is always the same when it comes to Destiny.
She is, as Service puts it, "bulletproof" — and she always leaves her mark on those around her.
"As coaches or adults, I don’t think that often enough we tell kids that we look up to them," Service said. "It doesn’t seem right, or it seems counter-intuitive or backwards. And so for me, it’s like, of all the kids that I do look up to, she’s one of them.
"That girl’s not going to fail," DeWitt added. "There’s just no way."
Ressino, who has been Davis’ age-group coach since she moved up at the start of the long-course season in the spring, says that just having Destiny in the pool at practices serves as motivation for her friends.
"I really don’t even have to come out and say it," he said. "They watch her and see her physical limitation, so they know that I don’t want to hear them complain, because she’s not complaining. … I think she helps motivate them just by them seeing what she’s trying to accomplish."
With Davis, though, it’s never just <em>trying</em> to accomplish something. Everything gets accomplished, regardless of how long it may take to do so. If she’s told to swim 200 meters, it gets done.
Getting passed in practice or finishing last in a race will never bother her. From the beginning, it’s always just been about finishing what she started.
"She’s got a great attitude," Service said. "One of the main things I admired was that nothing fazed her. If she did a poor job on something, she was a girl that you could talk to and explain that, ‘Hey, you can do better than that,’ and she would get it."
As a result, the improvements have kept coming. She’s dropped about 14 seconds on both her 100-meter freestyle and backstroke times thus far during the long-course season this summer.
More important than the faster times, though, is the impact that swimming has had on Davis’ day-to-day life.
<strong>Stronger than yesterday</strong>
Kristina Davis wasn’t sure what to expect when she signed Destiny up for swim lessons; the hope was that the sport might help build up the muscle in her legs somewhat. And there’s no doubt that it has.
Even just over the past few months, there has been a noticeable difference in her flutter kick. The girl who could barely keep her lower half from sinking just a couple of years ago is starting to create the occasional splash with her feet when freestyling in practice.
"Her kick’s gotten much better," Ressino said. "That’s her biggest hurdle, but we’ve been working a lot in the last couple of months to get that kick where she’s straightening her legs out more, pointing her toes a little bit, and it seems to be helping."
Davis will almost certainly always have issues to some degree when it comes to her legs and her ability to walk — she has already had a couple of surgeries on her feet, which tend to overcorrect themselves over time and turn inward, and her mother says another surgery is likely in the near future. But the strength she has been building in the water is undoubtedly helping her on land.
Not just in her legs, her coaches say, but in her core, where the stronger muscles can assist with balance and stability — and in her upper body, which ends up having to do an out-sized share of the work in the pool.
"She’s a super strong girl," Service said, "and if you ever give her a high five, you’ll know. She’ll try and break your hand off, man; she’s serious."
Carrie Utterback, another Franklin Regional age-group coach, is serious about encouraging Destiny to get classified to compete in the annual Cincinnati Para-Swimming Open meet next spring; it’s the largest non-championship Paralympic meet in the country.
"It will be really exciting to see how she does when the playing field is level," Utterback said.
The Davises have been receptive to the idea, but Kristina Davis has made it clear that she doesn’t ever want her daughter to be solely a Paralympic swimmer.
That, she says, would run counter to everything that Destiny has ever been taught to believe. And her coaches have always understood and respected that.
"Mom does not see Destiny as helpless or different than any other kid," DeWitt said. "If you treat them differently, you’re going to get a completely different result. You’ve got to have expectations, and Mom and Dad’s expectations are very high for Destiny. That’s why the sky’s the limit for her."
Physically speaking, life has never been easy for Destiny Davis — and odds are it never will be. But where other people might look at difficult tasks and think, "I can’t," she continues to face those same challenges thinking "I will."
That resolve may not translate into a ton of ribbons and medals through the coming years, but it has already earned her universal respect.
"In the pool, out of the pool, in the hallway, warming up, warming down, competing, whatever it is — it’s always a fight," Service said. "And she’s always in it."
