Meet Adaptive Athlete: Ellie Kennedy

 

Ellie grew up in a military family along with her four older siblings. Her family lived by a work hard, play hard lifestyle and Ellie competed in a lot of sports, focusing on softball and basketball. After high school, she started pursuing basketball at a small Virginia university, but didn’t feel like college was the right step at the time. 

In 1979, Ellie joined the Army reserves to pursue a job in the medical field. She passed Basic Training and continued on to Combat Medical Training. She began in a military hospital in San Antonio as a medic before becoming a Physical Therapy Assistant. Her love for basketball was still alive and she joined the Brooke Army team, traveling around the country competing.

She took a break from the Army to continue on with basketball, playing for a college team. A few years later, she wanted to return to the military as a medic for the Air Force. She worked with the Medical Air Evac team that worked worldwide to provide relief. 

Ellie switched back to the Army and was granted Officer status as an administrator. She also continued on in pursuit of her graduate degree in College Administration, but when the Gulf War started, Ellie was deployed. She spent her deployment in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as a postal officer, where her primary role was to ensure mail trucks were sent out successfully with the mail guards. She returned to the states in May 1991, a few months after the war ended.

Back in East Lansing, Michigan, Ellie finished graduate school and got a job working for Michigan State in the Business Department as an Academic Advisor, while continuing to raise her two kids. She also stayed active, training as a triathlete in her spare time.

During this time, Ellie started experiencing physical and mental symptoms, attributing it at the time to lingering PTSD that was never addressed. She put her career on hold for five years, focusing on her health and raising her kids. At the time, studies were being conducted on Gulf War veterans and the effects from the war. Ellie partook in a few studies and found some answers that could be explained by her time overseas.

In 2007, Ellie moved to San Diego and put a heavy focus on her health and therapy options. She was getting into shape for triathlons when her body began experiencing Ataxia symptoms. She would have hemiplegic migraines that were the equivalent of having a stroke, often meaning she had to relearn how to walk again. This obviously caused many setbacks and frustrations.

Ellie was introduced to the upright trike and began riding shortly after a move to Idaho in 2008. This was a relief because she could safely get back to riding again, something she has always loved. She connected with the Challenged Athletes Foundation (CAF) in Boise and started competing. In 2018, Ellie won a silver medal at nationals. 

Today, Ellie is still fighting Cerebellar Ataxia and a TBI from a few accidents. Her goals for ReDefine are centered around getting into the best shape she can be in order to compete in different qualifiers for the upright trike, including Nationals this July in Boise. Ellie also wants her life to be a platform to encourage and walk alongside others in their journey and spread what she’s learned to those in her network.