Grad student earns spot in Olympic Training Center’s resident program, sets sites on London 2012


Congratulations to Ileana Rodriguez ’08, whose quest to become an Olympic athlete just received a major boost: The architecture grad student is one of only eight paralympic athletes who have been invited to join the U.S. Paralympics Swimming Team Resident Program at the Colorado Springs Olympic Training Center (OTC). Rodriguez made the move to Colorado in mid-January.

The two-and-a-half year program is an important step in Rodriguez’s quest to represent the United States at the 2012 Paralympics in London, England. The resident program was created to enable athletes who have demonstrated the capacity to medal at the Paralympic Games the opportunity to increase their chances through participation in a comprehensive, full-time training program. The rigorous program offers free room and board, free use of world-class facilities and coaching from the top coaches in the world. It is an athlete’s dream.

A former competitive swimmer in Cuba, Rodriguez was living with her family in Cuba in the 1990s when she developed Arterial Venus Malformation (AVM) inside her spinal cord, leaving her athlete’s body permanently weakened. At the age of 13, the girl who swam competitively and danced ballet was told she would never walk again. Because the school she had been attending was not wheelchair accessible, Rodriguez was forced to enroll in a sports school to continue her education.

Says Rodriguez, “I took up swimming again just to be able to go to school.”

When she was 15, she and her mother emigrated to Miami, living for two years with the family that helped bring them to the United States. As a student at Palmetto High School, Rodriguez was a member of the swim team. After enrolling at FIU, she took a three-year hiatus from training, focusing instead on her architecture studies. One day a fellow physical therapy patient encouraged her to try out for the Paralympics, rekindling her childhood dreams of Olympic glory. Sibling coaches Belinda and Andrew Phillips, who remembered her from her days of high school swimming at Miami-Dade College’s Kendall Campus, agreed to coach her. In 2008, Rodriguez was the only South Florida swimmer represented at the Paralympic Trials. She didn’t make the team, but she made a name for herself at the national level.

Today the FIU alumna is ranked ninth in the world for the 100-meter breaststroke, 20th in the world for the 50-meter freestyle and 15th in the world for the 200-meter individual medley. She applied for the OTC resident program on a whim and was surprised when she was invited to join the team. Rodriguez met with her professors in the College of Architecture + The Arts, who agreed to work with her so that she needn’t abandon one dream for another.

The newsarchives.fiu.edu team caught up with Rodriguez just days before she departed to join the program. A video clip of the interview can be seen below, as well as a 2008 video of the swimmer working out in 2008 in preparation for the Paralympic Trials.

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