Losing Her Leg Opened A World Of Possibilities For Rising Teen Cara Pennington

Cara Pennington was 5 years old when she first started swimming, the same age at which she learned she had a tumor in her spine.

Surgeons removed the tumor, which was cancerous, but the operation paralyzed her left leg. Pennington got infections in the leg, which led to surgeries, which led to the leg healing completely straight.

“And it was affecting my overall health — mental, physical, anything you can think of,” she said. “I handled it for about a year.”

The summer before her freshman year of high school, Pennington wrote a four-page letter to her doctors.

“It was titled, ‘Reasons why I don’t want my leg anymore,’” said Pennington, from Elkton, Maryland. “And they were like, ‘Well, we wanted it to be your decision. We think you’re ready.’

“It was not a tough decision on my part. … I was honestly just excited more than scared because mentally, for me, my leg had been gone since it got paralyzed in kindergarten. It’s always been more like a horrible prosthetic that I was born with than an actual leg to me. I’m so much happier now. This is definitely who I was meant to be.”

Pennington is now a high school junior and much happier with the freedom the above-the-knee amputation has given her. It’s also made her a more competitive swimmer, she said, and the 16-year-old was recently added to the U.S. Paralympics Swimming national team roster. 

Pennington and her sister Ella had both tried soccer as young children but quickly realized it wasn’t their thing. They tried swimming next, and that clicked. Ella now swims at Rowan University in New Jersey.

Then, as Cara progressed through the different stages of doctors finding the tumor, surgeries and becoming paralyzed, she continued with swimming for her health and rehabilitation. She couldn’t run; at times she could barely walk, she said, but she could maneuver in the pool.

“Swimming takes the gravity portion out of the equation,” she said. “My coaches were very understanding and adapted things for me with how I swam versus how other people swim. They still treated me the same, but they adapted some things for me.”

Not long after her amputation, Pennington was able to back in the pool and realized she had a much greater ability to be competitive.

“I was like 'Oh my gosh, my leg’s not slowing me down anymore,'” said Pennington, who swims on her high school team and also with the Boys & Girls Club of Delaware. “I can do flip turns; I don’t have to do open turns. The only stroke that didn’t get faster is my butterfly because as much dead weight as that leg was, it would drag water for me in the kick.”

Pennington learned about Para swimming from her parents and went to her first meet at the Baltimore Para Classic. She fell in love immediately, realizing that she blended in seamlessly on that pool deck and could be more competitive than she can be competing against able-bodied swimmers.

“I’d always considered myself a slower swimmer, and then I got to Para and was like, wait, I’m pretty good at this,” she said. “I’m actually a decently fast person. It was very exciting to learn I could compete with people who were like me.”

Pennington’s favorite event is the 200-meter freestyle, but that’s not offered in her S9 class in Para swimming, so her second favorite is the 400 freestyle. She went to Para nationals for the second time this past December and took third in the 400 free behind Paralympians Olivia Chambers and Grace Nuhfer.

Her goals for the next couple of years include competing at the world championships next fall, the 2027 Parapan American Games as a college freshman and the 2028 Paralympic Games as a sophomore. She also hopes to study biohealth and/or biotechnology and swim at college. Loyola University Maryland is her top choice in part because Paralympic swimmers McKenzie Coan, Aspen Shelton and McClain Hermes are among their alumni.

Pennington’s father, Brad, said that seeing Cara named to the Para national team solidifies all the work she’s been putting in.

“For her, it’s not something that she’s doing now just for health reasons,” he said. “She can be competitive in her own right. You can see the confidence building in Cara. And the more consistency she has in the water she can say that because of Para, I’m competitive, too. I’m on that level, just on a different path.”

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.