Today is the Day - A Dad's Diary - August 31st, 2021

This blog post originated from Clayton’s Frech’s personal Facebook page. He is chronicling his journey as a dad with his son that is headed to Tokyo.

So I woke up today with a lot of energy and nerves. My heart was definitely beating faster than normal. Since I wrote my blog posts last night for the last couple of days, I didn't have much to do. I started to scroll through my photos... I don't have all photos on this phone as I switched phones in 2016, but I have a lot...

And it dawned on me that today is a major milestone. We are at the Paralympics, about to compete in Ezra's best event – the High Jump (3:25am 8/31 PST).

Regardless of how today shakes out, the journey has been amazing, difficult, and emotional. And despite the photos of a happy, kind, smiling kid, it has not always been easy or smooth. The kid has fought through challenges his entire life.

And I know he’s going to give it a great fight tonight on the track.

I know he’s ready.

So today I opted to provide some life/sport highlights of his first 16 years on this planet.

I hope this puts his story into perspective for anyone who doesn’t know our journey that well….

• 2005 – Birth Year. This could be a huge series of posts…. Tough couple of days in the hospital. We had no idea he would be born missing limbs. We start to figure it out. We map out a game plan. He’s a happy, charming little baby. He’s healthy otherwise, just has a different body than most of us. We get great advice from doctors and therapists along the way. Little did we know where he would end up. I would cry to myself while surfing because I didn’t think I could be the dad I thought I needed to be – doing sports with my kid. When he’s maybe six months old and starting to sit up, I realize he’s never seen a ball, so I stop at Toys R Us to get him a little ball to play with. I remember this like it was yesterday. His eyes lit up, he immediately caught it and rolled it back to me. He could do this for hours upon hours. I eventually found Challenged Athletes Foundation and our eyes were opened! In October 2005, we attend the SDTC and our lives are forever changed. We met Pirata the amputee surfer from Brazil, Rudy, Scout, and Sarah, all dear friends to this day. We started our journey in adaptive sports. His first word is ball, seriously. Throughout those early years, he hits all of his milestones. The kid is very coordinated. He figures things out.

• 2006 – He pulls himself to stand at about 10 months. We race him into Shriners to get him a prosthetic leg. He’s maybe 11 months old and immediately walks around the table with the leg, sort of looking at us like “where’s the leg been?” That summer, he learns to walk after pushing his toy lawn mower all around downtown Toronto while Bahar is filming Saw III.

• 2007/2008 – Surgery Year. This is also a whole series of posts some day in the future. We had a surgery booked, and cancelled it in the 11th hour. Bahar and I were literally going to puke for a couple weeks leading up to the cancelled surgery. My productivity ground to a halt at work. It was terrible. Fortunately, a doctor from Europe called us literally the night before we were going to the surgery to tell us to cancel, that the approach was all wrong. So we went back to the drawing board. Locked it in with the amazing Dr. Upton in Boston. Made it happen. Scariest thing imaginable – putting your child under for 15 hours in the hopes that they will have a better life. ICU was intense, brutal, emotional. I remember seeing him right after surgery and almost fainting… Bahar did an amazing job getting him back on his feet at home, with PT, OT, and event taking him to play bball on her hip while he was being fitted again for a prosthesis.

• 2009 – His motivational speaking career begins by speaking to local schools about his disability. He’s 4 years old. He’s also playing Toddler Bball at the YMCA because he’s not old enough to play at the recreation center. He’s featured on Good Morning America too and we meet Pau Gasol. Amazing relationships that is strong to this day. That Summer we attend Camp No Limits in Maine – it’s powerful. We see kids his age using knees, and resolve to get him walking on a knee asap to take a load off his hip. Shriner’s refused to give us a knee, so we switch to Hanger Clinic. They felt he was too young and prone to falling. We move on and join Hanger Clinic. He figures the knee out immediately and never looks back. Later that summer we fit him for his first running blade. Think about this, he’s 4 years old. That’s almost exactly 12 years ago. John Siciliano teaches him to run in a park in North Hollywood. He figures it out almost immediately.

• 2010 – By the time he’s 5 years old, he’s playing basketball, soccer, flag football, pretty much any sport he can get his hands on. He’s a great athlete, with a high IQ and a real ability to handle pressure and make the big shot, pass, or play. He’s the kid you want on your team, leg or no leg. In October October 2010 - Ezra wins the Rising Star award from the Challenged Athletes Foundation. The first of many accolades to come his way.

• 2013 – At the advice of John Siciliano (1996 Paralympian), we attend the Endeavor Games. He is 8 years old. He has a BLAST participating in a bunch of Paralympic sports. June 2013 - I take Ezra to the Endeavor Games, his first paralympic style competition. We meet many more Paralympians like Regas Woods and he breaks a bunch of records. He will continue to dominate his class, T63, throughout his entire junior career. He seems to shine on the track, and immediately falls in love with long jump and high jump. We make a commitment that weekend to come home and create something similar in LA, which becomes Angel City Sports by 2015.

• 2013-2015 – He tries out for a couple of different club basketball teams. His buddies who he plays recreation with, are all starting to play on clubs. He’s just as good as they are. Better probably than some of them. He doesn’t make any team. He keeps working. He’s playing both school and recreation sports. He’s not giving up on his dreams. He’s grinding.

• 2015 – We host the first Angel City Games. His grandfather, Bahar’s father, attends the first Games, and then passes away later that year. These two were incredibly close, inseperable. The night he passed, he attended a bit of Ezra's practice with me. I had a lot of work so we left after 15 minutes. But he sat there, smiling and cheering him on the entire time. Papa was beyond proud of Ezra, and we know he's with him today. Just look for the necklace around Ezra's neck.

• 2015-2016 (5th Grade). Ezra tries out for Sterling Basketball Academy to play with his buddies and he makes the team. Coach Brian sees the potential. He trains with the team and rides the bench for a while, until he finally sees some playing time. He starts an incredible club career, as an above knee amputee on a running blade. Really amazing. Referees and even other coaches would see him sub-in and their jaws would drop. I always felt like he had 3-5 minutes when a referee would first see him that he could foul and get away with it because the refs were so focused on his leg!

• May 2016 – Ezra gives a speech to the Golden State Warriors before the beat the Bulls regular season record and lose in the Championships. He tells them his goal is the be the first amputee to play in the NBA. He proceeds to get invited by Coach Kerr to join them for their practice, which is basically a shooting competition. He holds his own among one of the best teams of all time. At the end of the practice he stays around to do more shooting competitions and actually beats one of their players in a legitimate shooting game. Epic day.

• September 2016 – While watching the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games, Ezra sets the dream in motion to make the Tokyo Paralympic Team. He sees Sam and many of our friends on TV. He wants to be here. That day he sets up a jumps course in the backyard. He starts training every day.

• 2016-2017 (6th Grade). In the winter of 2016, maybe December (?), Ezra fractures his femur training for T&F and competing at a high level in club basketball. There is some possibility that his leg doesn't heal properly and that sport will be taken away from him forever. Can you imagine going through that as an 11 year old? This is an emotional low point for him. I took him to play wheelchair bball with Michael Garafola at UCLA and we did some Angel City Sports events too. The good news is that he took the rehab VERY seriously, spending 3 months completely off his leg, using a wheelchair to navigate life. Once he was cleared to walk, legs were so weak, he could barely walk at all initially. He wasn’t allowed to run for another 3 months. This was a really tough time for young Ezra. We lost almost an entire year of sports due to this injury, but damn did we learn a lot.

• 2017-2018 (7th Grade). Fall 2017 - He does NOT make the A team in basketball at his school. He makes the B team instead and rides the bench much of the season. It’s beyond heart-breaking to see this kid deal with this. He’s been a star his whole life. Eventually the coach realizes how good he is, and he works his way into the line-up, and leads them to championship game. Bahar and I are so proud of him - He stuck with it, despite some really brutal times… It was a tremendous slight as he had been playing elite club basketball. He also swims on the Junior High Swim Team for cross training purposes. At this point, I feel like there’s a chance he’s a better swimmer than track athlete. He tolerates it, but he doesn’t love it. He wants to be out on the track. We do this to keep his fitness level high but to minimize the load on his sound leg.

• 2018-2019 8th Grade. He swims on the swim team again. At this point this is to keep him fit without loading the leg. We are just trying to protect his leg through his growth period. That spring at a junior high track meet, we meet Coach LaTi. She’s a coach for another team. She starts working with him, mostly in High Jump. Barely two months later he makes the US Team as a 14 year-old in a qualifying high jump at the Angel City Games presented by The Hartford in June.

• 2019-2020 – 9th Grade. The summer before 9th Grade he goes to Junior Worlds in Switzerland, Para Pan American Games in Peru, and World Championships in Dubai. He’s on the world’s stage now. He appears to be in really good shape to make the Tokyo 2020 Team. He convinces me to not do swimming. He wants to train for T&F to make the Tokyo Team. I relent, but am concerned about load on his sound leg. Then Covid hits that spring. The Games are delayed due to Covid.

• 2020-2021 – 10th Grade. Covid year. We don’t have access to a track for the first half of the year. He’s training in the park, backyard, and at the beach. Some beach trainings at 6am are pretty cold, dark, dreary. He’s all in. Finally, in January, we get access to his school’s track and facilities start to re-open in LA. He’s got almost exactly five months before Trials. He’s progressing all season long. Almost has a dangerous injury with his leg falling off in a meet (popular video on his instragram). We can’t find a good 100M mark to save our lives. His LJ is coming along, but slowly. High Jump is good, but seems to come and go. Lots of frustration along the way. He does well at Desert Challenge, and then does well at Trials. He makes the Tokyo team. We dedicate a lot of support resources to his preparation efforts this summer, with prosthetic issues, PT, massage, chiropractor, sports psych, meditation, yoga, stretching, etc. This is a tremendous amount of work for us to keep him going.

• 2021-2022 – 11th grade. Here we are. We are in Tokyo. Today is also the first day of school, which he is missing in order to compete in the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games in his favorite event, High Jump!

• Let’s GOOOOOOO Ezra. You Got This!

Clayton