USWNT, Morgan take home top honors at ESPYS

Making His Mark: Special Olympics Athlete, Representative Visits The White House

Monica Garcia Fremont Tribune

Wyatt Spalding wants to inspire people to follow their dreams, even if those dreams take time to come to fruition, and even — perhaps especially — when you have to face adversity to get there.

Having been diagnosed with many medical conditions growing up, including cerebral palsy, Spalding was oftentimes overlooked, but that taught him life lessons. Through the adversity, he's participated in two Special Olympics USA Games and recently achieved one of his bigger goals in life, living on his own.

Now he wants to help others do the same.

"It just takes me extra time to accomplish my goals," Spalding said. "Yeah, it's frustrating, but it's kind of a part of my life. You keep working at it. You're going to fail a lot — I've learned that, yeah, I'm probably going to fail a bunch — but you just kind of keep going towards your goal and who knows what will happen as long as you keep working at it. When you fail, you just kind of keep going, don't stop no matter what the adversity is, you just kind of figure stuff out."

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Spalding has shared his story in many ways, including through Special Olympics competitions, his job at Special Olympics Nebraska and this year as a Sargent Shriver Global Messenger. Through the latter, Spalding recently visited the White House and met the president and other influential individuals in Special Olympics.

When Spalding, 29, was born, he had several medical conditions. Spalding along with his twin, Weston, were born two months prematurely. Soon after birth, Spalding was diagnosed with tracheoesophageal fistula (TEF), which meant part of his esophagus (food tube) was attached to his trachea (windpipe) instead of his stomach.

In the first six months of his life, Spalding underwent 13 surgeries. He's had 15 surgeries in total along with other procedures done on his stomach.

Spalding has been participating in the Special Olympics since 2008. He's played a variety of sports over the years, including flag football, basketball, tennis, golf, track and softball. In some cases, he plays these sports through a recreation organization and others he's been able to participate on local college's intramural teams.

He played on the Fremont Special Olympics team for 15 years and is currently playing with the Lincoln Shooting Stars Special Olympics. In Lincoln Spalding plays basketball, flag football and tennis, and he just started playing softball.

Spalding also participates in sports during the week with the University of Nebraska at Lincoln Unified team.

Also in Lincoln, Spalding is the program associate with Special Olympics Nebraska. In this role, he does athlete leadership. This includes helping put athletes in positions to be successful, teaching a public speaking class for athletes and running the "Brave in the Attempt" podcast.

Encouraged by a former supervisor at Special Olympics Nebraska, Spalding applied to be a Sargent Shriver Global Messenger in the fall of 2023. The program, named after the father of Tim Shriver, chairman of the Special Olympics International Board of Directors, has athletes promoting Special Olympics locally as well as on a national and global level.

Tossing in his hat more for the experience, the application to be a Sargent Shriver Global Messenger took Spalding over a week to complete. There were multiple interviews and a video reveal when he was chosen.

There were 100 Special Olympians from all over the world who applied. From those 100 athletes, 10 were selected to serve in this role for four years. Spalding is one of two from the North American region.

"It was a really big deal," Spalding said, noting he received his video acceptance about a year ago. "It was definitely something that changed my life a little bit. I'm going to go to Italy in March to the Special Olympics Winter World Games. In 2027, I'm going to Chile for the summer world games."

As part of this program, Spalding visited Washington D.C. For training in May. As a Sargent Shriver Global Messenger, athletes are asked to choose someone to join them in traveling and to help write speeches as a mentor. Spalding chose his longtime friend, Kenny Bristol.

With this more recent visit to Washington D.C., Spalding received an email inviting him to an event at the White House. The event would include politicians and celebrities, but instead of the program mentors joining the athletes, it was requested that family members join them, Spalding said. For this trip, Spalding brought his twin, Weston.

Although it was a short trip, Spalding said it was a wonderful experience.

"It was a definitely an experience that my twin brother and I will remember for the rest of our lives," Spalding said.

During the visit, the group of athletes met the president, and Spalding was selected to hand a Special Olympic jersey to him. During the visit, the president gave a speech, as did Shriver and famous Special Olympics athlete Loretta Claiborne.

"It was really cool," Spalding said, adding he met a lot of people at the event, including Shriver's wife Linda, NBA and Special Olympic Ambassador Andre Drummond and other Special Olympic athletes. "It was something you'd never thought would happen. It was an experience of a lifetime. To be on that biggest stage and be promoted and everything. I think it was just big for Special Olympics as a whole."

After the event at the White House, the group attended an after-party where they met some people from ESPN, including Chris Shero and Victoria Arlen.

Along with meeting the president, seeing the White House and meeting the people from ESPN, Spalding's favorite part of his trip was spending time with his brother.

"It's really hard to say what is the best thing because it was all just one big experience," he said. "You're just trying to take it all in."

This trip was about going with the flow, Spalding said, which is something he's learned to do throughout his life, good and bad.

"Whether it's a cool Special Olympic event that all of a sudden they want me to do or a medical thing pops up and I (was) supposed to go do something fun or hang out with my friends, or whatever, and all of a sudden I'm sick or have to have a surgery, you just go with it," he said.

Through being a Sargent Shriver Global Messenger, Spalding is hoping to continue his public speaking to inspire others. He's already given a few speeches.

Public speaking is one of his favorite things to do, he said.

Looking at being Sargent Shriver Global Messenger and looking back at his other accomplishments, Spalding admits he doesn't know how he's done it.

"Dealing with a disability, medical conditions, (it's) physically and mentally hard," Spalding said. "I somehow figured some stuff out, even though it was hard, I was able to come out the other side strong and a better person than I was before. Life's not fair, life doesn't really owe you anything, you just have to deal with the ups and downs of it, just go with it, and like I said, figure it out."

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COLLEGE NOTEBOOK: Rose Women's Basketball Tied For First In HCAC

Don't look now, but the Rose-Hulman women's basketball team is in a four-way tie for first place in the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference at 3-1.

The other three are Hanover, Franklin and perennial NCAA Division III power Transylvania.

Senior guard Jamie Baum is leading Rose (5-5 overall before Friday's game at Spalding) with 18.9 points per contest.

• Also in women's basketball from the Indiana State perspective, Chloe Williams has been quite successful of late. In her last five games, she's averaged 17.4 points.

• In swimming, ISU senior Chloe Farro added to her 50-yard freestyle wins with one at the Eagles Holiday Splash with a time of 23.83 seconds. Claire Parsons added to her event wins with a 500 freestyle victory at the Eagles Holiday Splash (4:56.93).

• In football, eight Sycamores were named to the Phil Steele All-MVFC Team. Elijah Owens also received honors as he picked up his third FCS Freshman All-American honors. Owens posted three 100-yard rushing games and three 200-yard passing efforts in 2024. Owens also had three games with multiple passing touchdowns, including a 30-for-37 game with 260 yards and three TDs in a loss at Eastern Illinois. He then added a career high 25 carries for 127 rushing yards and one touchdown at Youngstown State. He concluded the season with 168 passing yards, 107 rushing yards and one TD at Northern Iowa.

The eight Sycamores named to the All-Missouri Valley Football Conference team were Geoffrey Brown, Garret Ollendieck, Joey Shew, Griffin Comer, Gianini Belizaire, Maddix Blackwell, Rashad Rochelle and Jude McCoskey (who has since transferred to Tulane).

Brown and Ollendieck earned second-team recognition, Joey Shew third team and Comer, Belizaire and Blackwell fourth team and Rochelle and McCoskey fifth-team honors.

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