“I love everything about swimming,” says the senior on Georgia Tech’s swim team. “It’s just pure love, pure enjoyment. The competitive aspect is sopersonal. You have opponents and you want to win as a team. But it’s really just you against yourself. I love that.”

So, when swimming was taken away from MaryGrace — due to a pair of concussions she sustained in “freak accidents” in the water in 2025 — the pain wasn’t relegated to her brain alone. Thankfully, MaryGrace landed at Shepherd Center’s Complex Concussion Clinic (CCC). CCC offers fully integrated, multi-disciplinary treatment for patients whose concussions have produced more complicated, persistent symptoms. The clinic is led by founding director Russell Gore, M.D., an expert in neurotrauma who has significant experience in working with athletes specifically; in fact, this past summer, Dr. Gore served as concussion consultant and advisor for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. A Georgia Tech Yellow Jacket himself, he is an assistant professor in the Walter H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University.

“Dr. Gore and the whole care team understood how frustrated I was with the symptoms and how hard it was to not be swimming,” MaryGrace says. “They shared it all with me and they really understood the love I have for the sport. I felt like I was really being taken care of, just fully supported.”

Her care included testing, treatments, and exercises to directly address symptoms such as dizziness, blurred vision, fatigue, and light sensitivity. MaryGrace also participated in physical therapy and speech therapy to address cognitive issues that were making her academic life more difficult, as well.

“I was kind of re-learning how to do school,” MaryGrace says. “It was learning new study techniques — re-reading chapters before class, writing things down, charting what I knew and what I didn’t know to put markers in place that we could track. It was all about memory recall and retaining things again.”

For the better part of a year, she was fully away from the sport. The absence was painful, but her body was healing. Gradually, things improved. As she could get back in the water again and start training more, her mental health strengthened along with her physical health.

“Being at Shepherd Center and going through this, it sounds so cliché, but it really did make me so much more mentally strong,” MaryGrace shares. “And mentally strong in the water, specifically, as an athlete. Those mental exercises from the clinic carry over to the pool.”

Starting with her senior year this fall, she’ll have two seasons of eligibility left at Georgia Tech. She plans to get her master’s degree during that extra year and consider what comes next after college.

One thing she’s sure of: Swimming will always be part of her life.

“Oh, I’ll keep swimming forever!” MaryGrace says. “I’ve realized that all over again this past year. I’ve also learned more about resilience. This has all just reinforced for me that even the craziest setbacks can make you come back even stronger."

Written by Phillip Jordan

“That's when I fell in love with swimming again,” recalls Eden, “And it’s become a huge part of my life.”

For a while, swimming didn’t seem to be in the cards anymore for Eden. In November 2020, Eden sustained a C5 - C6 level spinal cord injury (SCI) when she and her friends were boating off the coast of Naples, Florida. Eden dove off the boat and hit a sandbar. She spent about two weeks in the ICU at Lee Memorial Hospital in Fort Myers, Florida, before transferring to Shepherd Center.

“I was excited to be at Shepherd,” she says. “It sounds strange, but you’re going from the ICU, lying down and not doing anything — to a place where people are happy to see you, and they make the environment fun. They have great attitudes and have seen this happen before, so you’re not the only one going through it. I think one of the biggest things about inpatient is that you feel so seen, and people understand the challenges that you're going through, but they also see you as a person, so they don't just see you for your disability.”

Eden spent three months in the Adolescent Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Program, followed by three months in the Day Program. After some time at home, she returned to the Day Program, where she says her therapist, Heather Jones, DPT, helped her get her life together beyond Shepherd’s walls.

Eden has always been athletic, enjoying sports and the outdoors, so she tried adaptive sports, including hand cycling and sit skiing.

But swimming tops her list.

“I’ve fallen in love with swimming. It’s the closest I've been able to get to able-bodied exercise because I'm getting my heart rate up, and my body weight doesn’t hold me down. I'm going to continue to swim for as long as I can.”

And that passion has led to experiences Eden never imagined that day in the Shepherd Center pool. In March 2023, she started swimming with the Shepherd Sharks, part of the Fred, Shaler, and Andrew Alias Sports Teams program. In December, she competed in the 2023 U.S. Paralympics Swimming National Championships in Orlando, Florida, where she set American records in both the 50- and 100-meter backstroke.

“It was an amazing experience — really exciting and kind of overwhelming — because I had never been to something that big before,” she explains. “But even in that environment, it's very similar to Shepherd, and everyone has a disability, so no one sees you as any different.”

Beyond swim practices and weight training, Eden is in her junior year at Georgia State University. She’s majoring in psychology and hopes to continue her studies to earn a doctorate in rehabilitation psychology.

She says conversations with adolescent program rehabilitation counselor Cheryl Linden, MA, LPC; MS OT/L, planted the seeds for her interest in the field.

“I worked most of my adolescence, and I asked Cheryl, ‘What can I do now? How can I go back to work? My hands don't work. My body doesn't work.’ She asked if I had thought about counseling. And I realized that when I met people going through the same injury as me, I was helping them process. I would love a career where I could help people who have experienced this or other traumatic injuries.”

Eden is already giving back to others as a peer mentor in Shepherd's Keeping Adolescents and Young Adults Connected (KAYAC) program.

“That has been a great avenue for me to meet people in person. I've made amazing connections. Families tell me it's so good to see a young person transitioning through injury, returning to school, participating in sports, and continuing life. One person was a swimmer who wanted to get back into the sport, and I helped get him back into the pool,” she recalls. “I love that so much!”

Eden reaches many people — even those she doesn’t meet face to face — through social media, including her TikTok account h0twheels2.0, where she has close to 300,000 followers.

“I started my TikTok account to show that people with spinal cord injuries still live very normal lives. By posting what I am doing, I'm spreading awareness, so people know we still get out there. It's nice to hear from someone who doesn't have a disability, but when people who have disabilities say that they see what I'm doing and they want to try things as well, that's what's important to me,” she explains.

For now, Eden is focusing on school and swimming. In April, she competed in an international swim meet in Indiana, the Citi Para Swimming World Series USA. There, she swam her best times yet in all four of her events and got internationally classified, which means she will be able to compete in more big events. She swam with the Shepherd Sharks at the Bill Keating Jr. Memorial Cincinnati Para-Swimming Open in May and has her sights set on competing with Team USA for meets in the future.

As she trains, she’s grateful for the embrace of her Shepherd community, the support of Alias family, whose generosity has elevated Shepherd’s sports programs, and for the connections she has made.

“Shepherd has been a great vessel for me to build a support system. I've made friends who have turned into my family. At Shepherd, I don’t have the excuse of, ‘Oh, I can't do this because of my disability,’ because everyone there knows how to help me figure things out. It went from a hospital setting that should have been very traumatic and turned into a place of support, love, and family.”

Written by Ruth Underwood 

Lovejoy, 56, has won eight Paralympic medals and holds 10 world records, five Pan/Am records and 14 U.S. records. He began swimming following rehabilitation for a paralyzing (C-5 to -7) spinal cord injury he sustained in a car accident in 1986.

Lovejoy attributes his athletic success to a positive outlook and disciplined training regimen. “I never would have guessed that I would accomplish so much right after my injury happened,” he said, reflecting on his athletic career.

He added that mentoring a successor to follow in his athletic footsteps will complete what he hopes to accomplish in his sports career. As the head coach of the Shepherd Sharks swim team, Lovejoy has coached swimmers ranked fifth and 10th in the world, as well as numerous other successful swimmers.

Shepherd Center sports teams coordinator Matt Edens, who has worked closely with Lovejoy, said:  “No one is more deserving to be a hall of fame inductee than Curtis. He puts in his time in the water and gives back to the sport, as well.”

Lovejoy was inducted with fellow Georgia aquatics athletes, including David Larson, an Olympic gold medalist, and Kristy Kowal, an Olympic silver medalist.

Lovejoy added that he would not be where he is today without the love and support that Shepherd Center has provided for him.