This past summer in Paris was a busy one for Kelley Becherer. In late August, she lived in Team USA’s dorms in the Olympic Village during the Paralympics, meeting elite para athletes from every sport under the sun, cheering them on and doing her part to help them perform at their best.
The last night of the Games, she was ecstatic to watch the men’s wheelchair basketball team clinch gold over Great Britain.
“We’d been hanging out with those guys for two plus weeks,” the 2015 Northeastern graduate says. “Seeing that happen was such a thrilling moment in the Games.”
Becherer is no stranger to the Paralympics. An elite swimmer with a severe visual impairment, she made her debut as a young teenager at the 2004 Paralympics in Athens, ultimately competing in three Games as a freestyler and winning gold medals in Beijing and London.
But in Paris, she was once again a rookie — making her first trip as an orthopedic physical therapist for Team USA. Working in the sports medicine tent in the Olympic Village, Becherer iced down, taped up, and stretched out athletes with a wide range of physical abilities, competing in every sport under the sun.
