William Rankine learned how to swim before he could walk.

By 8 years old, he was competing with his local club team and loving it. But for years, Rankine just wasn’t interested in participating on the Para side of the sport despite being born with Leber congenital amaurosis, a genetic condition that causes his vision to get progressively worse over time.

“It was just something different I didn’t want to try,” said the native of Warner Robins, Georgia. “But then I ended up going to (the Para national championships in Lewisville, Texas) in 2019, and I really liked the group of people. It was a good community.”

Now 19 and a college freshman, Rankine is currently competing in his first international meet at the Parapan American Games in Santiago, Chile. He also won his first international medal, claiming silver in the 100-meter breaststroke SB12, then followed that up with bronze in the 200-meter individual medley.

One of the things Rankine always loved about swimming was that the sport is essentially the same for sighted athletes as it is for those with visual impairments.

“There aren’t as many adaptations to the sport to make it something you can do,” he said. “You’re not changing the sport.”

One exception to that is tapping, in which someone stands at the edge of the pool with a pole and reaches out to tap the swimmer at a certain point in their approach to the wall. Rankine said he learned a lot about that from Fred Lamback, a coach who has a popular Para swim meet named after him in Atlanta and encouraged Rankine to get involved in that side of the sport.

“He’d been wanting me to go to a Para meet for a long time but, I don’t know, I just didn’t want to,” Rankine said.

But the community he found changed his outlook. One of the swimmers he met was Brad Snyder, who owns six Paralympic gold medals, two silvers and one world record in swimming and triathlon. Snyder lost his vision from an improvised explosive device while serving in Afghanistan as a member of the U.S. Navy.

“He was just really great,” Rankine said. “It was cool to be able to talk to other people who had similar challenges.”

Rankine set a U.S. Para record in the 200 breaststroke SB12, but since one didn’t exist prior to that he said it was a little anticlimactic filling out the paperwork to register his time. When he broke the 100-meter breaststroke SB12 at a meet in Lewisville in 2021, it was a bit different.

“That was fun, just to break it versus filling out forms for a record that didn’t exist before,” he said.

Unfortunately, the 100-meter breaststroke in the SB12 category won’t be contested at the Paralympics in Paris next year so Rankine has been trying to focus more on backstroke and freestyle as he prepares for next summer’s U.S. Paralympic Team Trials. Having been to the trials back in 2021, he believes, will help as he makes his case to go to Paris.

“I was pretty nervous, way too nervous going into (the 2021 trials in Minneapolis),” he said. “I had a hard time sleeping the night before so I kind of, I don’t know, want to treat it like it’s just another swim meet. I think it’ll be helpful to hopefully not have the same level of nerves.”

Even before traveling to Santiago to compete internationally for the first time, it’s been a fall full of new beginnings for Rankine. After meeting U.S. teammate Mikaela Jenkins at a Para meet, she suggested he come visit Grove City College, where she’s now a junior on the swim team. He visited the school located 60 miles north of Pittsburgh, liked the coach and the campus and made the move north. He’s currently undeclared and exploring his options for a major, including politics and physics.

It’s been a lot of work getting used to balancing school and swim obligations, learning a new coach and new teammates, and working on improving his freestyle and backstroke before next summer, Rankine said, but there is one thing he certainly appreciates about his new setup for his preparation for Paris — an indoor pool.

“My old team’s pool was outside, and I didn’t do a lot of backstroke before because the sun would hit my eyes and they’re very sensitive to sunlight,” he said. “I could bear it for a little bit, but on a really sunny day it was really bad. Since I’m in an indoor pool now I’ve been able to do a lot more backstroke.”

Karen Price is a reporter from Pittsburgh who has covered Olympic and Paralympic sports for various publications. She is a freelance contributor to USParaSwimming.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.

A Big Year Of Firsts For William Rankine Now Includes Two International Medals

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