3 years after diving accident, 21-year-old paralyze swimmer prepare for biggest challenge yet

ATLANTA - Eden Schroeder has found her way back to the water she's always loved.

"I started competitive swimming when I was about 8 years old," Schroeder says. "I did it all throughout middle school, all throughout high school."

She loved the solitude of being in the pool, of pushing herself.

"Originally, what drew me to swimming was that everything is based on you, and everything that you're doing, it isn't really a team thing, it's all you in the water," Schroeder explains.

But para swimming could not be more different.

It requires intense teamwork and trust, to help get the 21-year-old safely into Shepherd Center's pool, where she trains.

"I'm a C5/C6 quadriplegic," Schroeder says.  "So, I'm paralyzed from the chest down. My triceps are paralyzed. My hands are also paralyzed. It's a little different because it takes a team to get me in the water, and it takes a team to get me ready to get me out afterward. But, once I'm in the water, I'm completely independent."

It's been 3 years since a diving accident on Nov. 27, 2020, changed the course of Schroeder's life.

She was boating with childhood friends off the coast of Naples, Florida, when they stopped for a swim.

"And, because I was a swimmer, I was so used to diving headfirst and executing dives perfectly, because I knew how to do it," Schroeder remembers.  "The water was super shallow, but no one really knew, because there's this thing called a sandbar, which is basically just a random pile sand in the middle of the ocean. And I dove in headfirst and then immediately broke my neck and couldn't feel or move anything."

Schroeder says she felt strangely peaceful, floating in the water, until she saw the fear on her friend's faces, and the paramedics.

"I was like, ‘Please fix me,’" And, then I passed out. And I don't remember anything for the next 3 or 4 days."

After two weeks in an ICU, Schroeder was airlifted to Shepherd Center, where she would spend the next 6 months, first as an inpatient, then as an outpatient.

"In the beginning, it was definitely tough, and that first year was probably the hardest time of my life," she says. "But you just can't give up. You have to keep pushing."

21-year-old Eden Schroeder sits by the pool at Shepherd Center in Atlanta, where she is training for the US Paralympic Swimming Championship.

Which is how she found herself in Shepherd Center's pool.

"My first experience in the pool. I had heard about it, but I wasn't allowed to go because it was so fresh in my injury. And also, it was a diving accident. So, it's a little scary to get back in the water after something like that. But I was practicing adaptive scuba diving, which was really cool. And the swim coach here actually saw me swimming, and he was like, 'Hey, she's really good!'"

She is now a member of the Shepherd Sharks swimming team, competing in the backstroke, which allows her to work around her physical limitations.

"In the Paralympic classification system, it goes from S1 to S14, and S1 is the most physically impaired, and that's where I'm at," Schroeder says.  "So, there are only two (S1 swimmers) in the world, and I'm one of them."

This weekend, Schroeder will compete in the US Paralympics Swimming National Championship in Orlando.

"I am super excited about it, and also very nervous because I haven't really done anything this big yet," she says.  "It gives you a goal, and it's something that I'm really passionate about. I wake up every day excited to do it, something I look forward to every week. It's the competitions, the rush."

Eden Schroeder found not just strength but a sense of belonging in the water.

"It's what makes me happy," she says. "It's my happy place."

Schroeder now has thousands of followers on her TikTok account documenting her experiences as a wheelchair user, "Wheelchair In the Wild."