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By SARAH TRAVER
Competing in basketball, volleyball, skiing, golf, soccer, horseback riding, roller skating and softball seems like it may be a bit overwhelming. It definitely isn’t for Maggie Sebastian, a 61 year-old special education teachers aide at Curtis Corner Middle School.
Sebastian has just qualified for the National Special Olympics taking place at the end of this month. She will be competing in downhill skiing, a sport she has been doing for more than 30 years. Locally, she trains and skis at Yawgoo Valley, located in Exeter, every Tuesday night. Only about five people from Rhode Island will be competing in this competition. “Everything is nice and warm, but your face gets it (cold),” Sebastian said. She just got new skis that she saved up to buy and was wearing her new ski jacket that donned the Special Olympics logo. “I like meeting people…I love skiing. You get to know people and travel. I do get nervous, very nervous especially waiting…but it’s the thrill! The one thing Sebastian doesn’t really like about skiing is waiting to go. “Waiting at the top of the hill where you have to wait for the other athletes to go down. You go down in heaps so you all go down in your group. Sebastian has competed in the International Special Olympics several times. In 1982 she competed in basketball and her team came in second in their division. In 1995 she competed in volleyball, and her team won the bronze medal, with a little catch. Six weeks before the event Sebastian broke her wrist while playing a unified soccer game and competed one on one with the goalie. That didn’t stop her though. “We wrapped it up and I was the one-armed bandit,“ she said. According to the Special Olympics web site, “Special Olympics unified sports is an initiative that combines approximately equal numbers of Special Olympics athletes and athletes without intellectual disabilities (called Partners) on sports teams for training and competition.” Sebastian competes in many of these events and sports. In 1999 she competed in cycling and won a gold and a silver medal. For this event, she trained locally biking along the south county beaches. In 2006, she received a big honor for her athletic abilities. She was inducted into the International Basketball Hall of Fame, located at the University of Rhode Island. She received a plaque and a certificate for the enthusiasm and passion that she brings to the game. Sebastian has quite a background and has come a long way. As a child she was bounced from foster home to foster home landing in the children’s center in Mt. Pleasant as an adolescent. At age 15 she was placed in the Ladd School, located in Exeter, and remained there until she was 25. She made it very clear she did not like it there and said “every chance I got I would run away. At 25, Sebastian went to her first group home and remained there for a few years. In her late 20’s she got her first apartment with a roommate and loved it. She lived in Narragansett for in various apartments for about 30 years after that. She recently moved to South Kingstown last year and said she loves her new home. “Its been a long road. You have your hard times and your good times. You mess up and learn from your mistakes!,” Sebastian said. Sebastian has been a teachers aide at CCMS for about 16 years. She currently works one on one with a young boy who requires a lot of medical and physical needs. She takes him to class and helps with anything he may need including his medicines. “I like working with kids. The honest to god’s truth is I have more patience with kids than with grown up’s,” Sebastian said. Sebastian also baby-sits for many families in town. She babysat for her good friend, Kim Picard’s children for many years. “ Sebastian is just a wonderful person. She is a beautiful person,” Picard said Joni Lonczak is another very good friend of Sebastian’s who has helped her for many years and is one of her coaches. “Maggie is a phenomenal athlete…she is so personable, travels well and goes with the flow. She gives you 110 percent all the time when she competes. She’s like the mother hen,” Lonczak said. As if all the sports, work and babysitting weren’t enough Sebastian has also been working on writing a book about her life for the past five or six years. She isn’t quite done yet, but Lonczak said she read what was done and it made her cry. “For her to go from where she was to where she is now is remarkable,” Lonczak said. |
