Yaseen El-Demerdash Leaves Competitive Swimming With A Full Heart

There wasn’t one exact moment at which Yaseen El-Demerdash knew that he was ready to retire from competitive swimming.

But as his post-Paris break from training stretched through 2025 into 2026, he still wasn’t eager to recommit to the process and return to the pool. At the same time, he found himself excited about other ventures and passions as training continued to take a backseat. The 2024 Paralympian, who was named to his first U.S. Para national team in 2021, made the decision to step back from the sport earlier this summer and shared the news in early July.

“The reality is that I could get back into training and still be competitive if I wanted it, but if I commit another two years now when clearly it doesn’t mesh with my passions and where I find joy, there’s a good chance that I get out of the pool after (the 2028 Paralympic Games in Los Angeles) and hate swimming,” he said. “And that was the last thing I wanted, to hate the sport that’s been such a big part of my life and given me so much.”

El-Demerdash, 22, has plenty to look forward to in his post-swimming career. He recently graduated from the University of Kansas and works as a telecommunications engineer in Kansas City. He also recently launched a nonprofit called the Ripple Affect Foundation, along with partners including fellow Paralympian Jack O’Neil, to provide training stipends to athletes and make sports more accessible and inclusive.

But he’s most looking forward to spending more time with his family, and the opportunity to cheer on his three talented younger siblings in their own athletic endeavors. 

His sister, Maryam, is an incoming junior at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where she plays Division I soccer. She was recently called up to play for the Egyptian national team in the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations tournament in Morocco with a World Cup qualifying spot on the line. His brother Yusuf is 16 and a multi-sport athlete who is in a soccer Olympic Development Program in Kansas City. His youngest brother, 14-year-old Adam, is an elite youth soccer goalkeeper who recently signed with the Houston Dynamo Academy.

“It’s just so crazy to me that he’s moving to Houston at 14,” El-Demerdash said. “But he just loves it. He watched all of us go through our processes, and he found his passion. It’s great that he’s doing so well, but the fact that he has that much love for his sport, especially in a position like that that’s so stressful, is so exciting to see.”

El-Demerdash, who was born with Poland Syndrome and is missing muscles and bones on the right side of his body, credits his own success to his family. They instilled confidence in him throughout childhood and always encouraged him to follow his passions both in and out of the pool. His love for swimming, he said, took a new turn when he found Para swimming in high school and discovered opportunities in the sport that he never thought possible.

“Every single opportunity I got, every place I got to visit, it was just icing on the cake,” he said. “Making it to the Paralympics was the end goal, but it never felt like that had to happen in order for everything else to be great. I was very fortunate to have every single opportunity I had because they were all another chance for me to enjoy doing this thing that I loved. And I tried not to take that for granted.”

Two memories will stay with El-Demerdash forever, he said. One was touching the wall at the end of the 100-meter backstroke S10 at the 2023 Parapan American Games and winning the gold medal. 

“That was the culmination of so much sacrifice,” he said. “Moving to Colorado Springs and training full-time and putting a hold on my studies and leaving my family; I really didn’t know how that was going to turn out. So to see it all come together in a race that I did not expect it to come together in was surreal.”

The other was in Paris on day one of the Paralympics. Team USA coach Patrick McCloskey had suggested El-Demerdash go out on the pool deck and take a moment to soak it all in, and he did.

“I just went out and sat kind of where the photographers were,” he said. “And I think I sat there for probably 30 minutes at the end of warm-ups just trying to recognize the environment I was in and the amount of people who were there to watch us swim.”

One piece of advice El-Demerdash would offer a young swimmer just starting on their journey is to recognize that there’s something to learn from everyone you meet along the way. The other is to figure out your why, because that’s the thing that will keep you going on the days when you don’t feel like getting up early or missing out on the fun stuff your friends are doing. If you can’t remind yourself why you’re making the sacrifices and putting in the work, he said, it’s going to be really difficult to love what you’re doing.

Which is why he feels confident in his own decision. 

“How you end is just as important as how you begin (the journey),” he said. “I started it because I loved it and I continued doing it because of that. If you don’t love what you’re doing, why are you doing it?” 

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.