The world was wide open with possibilities for a young Elizabeth Kolbe the day she climbed into the car for a ride that would change her life forever.
She was 14 years old. A volleyball player who also enjoyed soccer and basketball. She was getting ready to start high school in about three months where perhaps she would soon be playing varsity in one or more of the sports.
It was all right there in front of her. Then the car veered off the road.
``We flipped over a couple of times,'' the current Waltham resident recalled with the disarming matter-of-fact delivery of someone no longer shocked by her own harrowing tale. ``When we stopped, everyone else walked away and was fine. I couldn't move.
``I snapped my neck and was paralyzed from the neck down.''
For many teenagers, that experience might have been the end. The end to athletic dreams. The end to a once-bright outlook on the world and a young girl's limitless future. The end of optimism in the face of a harshly pessimistic prognosis.
Kolbe was told she would be confined to a wheelchair. With hard work, she might be able to regain use of her arms. But, immediately, there was nothing. In a violent flash, she went from being a volleyball prospect in her native Ohio to a quadriplegic with little hope of ever walking again.
Yet, that's not where the story of Elizabeth Kolbe ended. In many ways, it is where it began for the future Paralympic swimmer.
Kolbe began physical therapy in a swimming pool and slowly regained some use of her triceps and chest muscles. Then, instead of using the water as a means to float the parts of her body she could no longer move, she began to use it as a place to push the parts she could. She started to swim and, eventually, compete.
``I basically swim with my upper body and pull through my entire body with my arms,'' she explained. ``It would be like an able-bodied swimmer had their legs tied together. Only I have to use my upper arms to do all the work because I can't move my hands the way a swimmer would, I guess, cup the water.''
Where all the physical limitations tried to harness her, Kolbe's competitive nature broke through their reins. On solid ground, she was still bound to a manual wheelchair. In the water, she was free to stretch for the athletic goals of any other aspiring high school star.
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Kolbe qualified for the U.S. Paralympic Nationals twice while in high school.
When she first qualified, she was classified as an S2 disabled swimmer on a scale of 1 through 10 with S1 being the most physically limited. With her increased movement, she was elevated to S3, where she swims to this day.
But, as great as her accomplishments were, Kolbe set her sights beyond just swimming competitively against fellow disabled swimmers. During her senior year of high school, she swam for her varsity squad as well.
``I was training with my club coach at a local school when my high school coach saw me and told me that they'd love to have me on the team,'' she said.
Only, she wasn't just on the team.
``Oddly enough, I was able to score quite a few points in high school,'' she said. ``We had a small school so a lot of teams didn't have that many swimmers. My coach would put me in the harder events that nobody wanted to do, like the butterfly. Since the top three swimmers scored, as long I finished I would score points.''
Those feats would already make for a dramatic feel-good story. But Kolbe still wasn't done. Her aspirations were limitless in the classroom as well. She applied and was accepted to Harvard University.
There she became an honors student in health care policy and interned in Sen. John Kerry's office - where she assisted him during the debate on stem cell research. .
She also became a Division I varsity athlete.
``Coming to college I had no idea Harvard would accept someone with a fairly severe physical disability on the team,'' she said. ``The first year, the coach didn't know what to do with me. She had me as the team manager. But I still got to train with the team three or four days a week. After the first year, the coach realized that I might as well be on the team.''
For the rest of her career, she swam as a member of the Crimson. She was involved with mostly home meets, but as a senior this winter swam for Harvard in the road tri-meet against Yale and Princeton.
``Even though I wasn't scoring points for the team it was exciting,'' she said. ``I was swimming so much faster than I ever had and it was great knowing I was doing it at Blodgett Pool.''
Though she wasn't breaking any Ivy League records, she was breaking many national Paralympic records for her classification.
She was also breaking down many perceptions of the so-called limits of a quadriplegic.
``It's always really positive,'' she said of the reaction she gets in the pool. ``No matter what team we raced against, people always came up to me and congratulated me and told me it's great for me to be on the team. It was kind of strange sometimes, but I guess it's great for them to see someone with a disability compete on a college varsity team like that.''
Though she bypassed some Paralympic competitions due to her studies at Harvard, she did compete in the 2007 Parapan American Games in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil where she was named a United States team captain.
It all led up to her qualifying for the 2008 Paralympics Summer Games in Beijing to be held Sept. 6-17 in the same venues where the 2008 Summer Games are currently capturing the world's attention.
``It's been exciting watching the Olympics on TV knowing that in a few weeks I am going to be there too,'' she said.
Kolbe left this week for Colorado Springs, Colo. to get her equipment and train for about a week before the team travels to Japan for more training and to get adjusted to the time change. In China, Kolbe will be the only S3 swimmer on the United States women's squad - she said there are no S1 or S2 swimmers on the team - but faces stiff international competition in the 50 freestyle and 50 backstroke.
``Just like the Olympics,'' she said, ``everyone that goes to the Paralympics has expectations of getting a medal.''
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Kolbe now has a place in a Waltham to safely store any medal from Beijing along with the bronze, two silvers and a gold she earned in Rio.
With her sister teaching in Cambridge, and her brother attending Brandeis University, her parents decided to relocate from Ohio to the Watch City. Her father, John, will teach at the MacArthur Elementary School this fall as Elizabeth plans to work for a year in Boston before attending law school at Stanford University.
A little more than eight years removed from the day that nearly ended her life, Kolbe has found a way to embrace every aspect of it. In the process, she's shown that the world of possibilities didn't close for her in the aftermath of that devastating crash.
She just may have had to try a little harder to find it.
``I guess I would want people to see me and realize not to put limits on themselves,'' she determined. ``When I was injured, I really had no idea what was in store for me. Life can change in an instant.
``But I was still open to competing. I was open to moving away to college and just not letting there be any constraints on my life. I just think it's good for people to see someone blow by any expectations that you would have for someone with this type of disability.''
