Mackenzie Soldan is a new Lake Nona resident who moved here to train at the USTA National Campus. Soldan is a wheelchair tennis player who played in the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games. She is originally from Michigan and attended the University of Alabama.
“I was injured at [age] one, I found out that I had a spinal cord tumor,” says Soldan as she begins to explain just what happened to spark the beginning of her athletic career. The surgery that removed the tumor left her paralyzed from the waist down. The tumor came back after six months, this time larger and possibly cancerous. Doctors gave her a maximum of eight months to live. However, eight months had passed and she was still alive. At 1½-years-old, they found out the tumor had stopped growing, and doctors were able to remove it for good.
Both of her parents had played tennis in high school, and her sister played as well. She describes it as a “family sport.” While playing tennis, she also found joy in playing basketball. Her mom found a local basketball team for her to play on, and she stayed on the team until she was 18. This allowed her to get a college scholarship to play basketball at the University of Alabama.
While she was making her way through basketball, she also made her first junior USA team for tennis when she was 15. She competed on this team until she went to college. It was not long before someone dropped out of the Rio 2016 Paralympics, and the team needed a replacement qualifier. She was in the middle of leaving class when she got the call from her coach that said, “Hey, can you go to Mexico in a month?” Soldan ended up winning the gold in singles and doubles.
Throughout her athletic career, Soldan bumped into someone who is now a good friend of hers, Shelby Baron. Baron is originally from Hawaii and was born with spina bifida, which is a defect of the spine and spinal cord. She was using crutches up until her third grade P.E. teacher contacted an adaptive P.E. specialist. “She came and put me in my first wheelchair,” states Baron. Just like Soldan, she picked up a liking for both tennis and basketball. For tennis, she joined a junior team and kept playing for recreation.
Soon, Baron found herself going to a wheelchair camp, which was the first time she had been around people her age playing wheelchair tennis. This is also where she met Soldan. Soldan was her camp counselor. Baron was soon placed on a national tennis team and transferred over to the University of Alabama (where Soldan went to school) on a full wheelchair tennis scholarship. She was the first to do this, and now she has her residency there.
Baron also competed in the Rio Paralympics. She applied as a “wild card” and someone had dropped out, allowing her to get the position.
Both Soldan and Baron recently left to compete in the World Team Cup representing Team USA. They anticipate going to Tokyo, Japan, to compete in the 2020 Paralympic Games and are currently training for it.
