Blind Dacula Swimmer to Compete at Rio Paralympic Games

It would seem that McClain Hermes has nothing left to prove when she represents Team USA at the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio this September as the team’s youngest member at 15.

Hermes holds 14 short-course American swimming records, two long-course records, holds a world record in the 1500m freestyle, won a bronze at the 2015 Parapan American Games and a gold at the CanAm Para Swimming Championships, has two Pan American Records, and started a nonprofit organization with her father.

Feeling like an underachiever yet?

Hermes, a legally blind sophomore at Gwinnett Online Campus, is not one to let success get in her way. After all her achievements, she participated in a triathlon this summer with her best friend and has collected 15,000 pairs of shoes for the homeless since she and her dad started Shoes for the Souls in 2009.

(If you want to help with her nonprofit, contact her and she’ll be in touch… after, one assumes, she gets back from participating in the Paralympic Games.)

The schedule for Hermes’ first competitions at the Games will be as follows.

• Sunday, September 11 100 Breaststroke Prelims — 9:30 a.m. — 11:50 a.m.
• Monday, September 12 400 M Freestyle Prelims — 9:30 a.m. — 12:15 p.m.
• Wednesday, September 14 100 Back Prelims — 9:30 a.m. — 12:05 p.m.

The Games are slated be broadcast on NBA.

Originally published at Gwinnett Magazine.