Local teen tops national wheelchair tennis rankings

By Sandy Lippe, La Jolla Village News

Sunday, November 22, 2009

University City’s Dana Mathewson, 

a women’s wheelchair tennis champion, 

is now attending the University of Arizona.

What would you expect from a high school senior, who is a gifted tennis player, a community volunteer with 200 hours of service her senior year and a 4.1 grade point average at a prestigious private school like Bishop’s? You might answer that the sky’s the limit.

Dana Mathewson graduated from Bishop’s last June and set her academic and athletic sights on the University of Arizona, where she is adjusting to dorm life, tennis competition, academics and everything a college freshman deals with. The sky is the limit for Dana still.

Dana is ranked the No. 1 Open Player in the United States Women’s Wheelchair Tennis.

“I haven’t checked my international ranking in a few weeks, but last I checked I was ranked No. 22 in the world for Women’s Open singles as well. I’m pretty pleased with myself as of late. Hopefully, I can keep up my rankings, though, in the off-season,” Dana said.

Growing up in University City, she attended Mission Bay Montessori Academy and absolutely loved it. After graduating from sixth grade, she went to Bishop’s and had to repeat seventh grade due to numerous medical absences.

“I got ’sick’ or injured when I was entering sixth grade and it took my body and mind a long time to adjust to my new situation, I guess,” she said. “I say I got sick because the reason I’m in a wheelchair is a bit of a weird one.”

When Dana was 10, she contracted a rare neurological disease known as Transverse Myelitis (TM).

“I think I remember doctors saying only five in one million people contract it each year. Lucky me!” she said. “I was at soccer practice running sprints at the very end when I felt a sharp pain in my lower back. It almost felt like someone was stabbing me, and then my legs started to feel weaker and proceeded to get a ‘pins and needles’ feeling like when a limb falls asleep. The rest is a flash of random memories, but I do remember crying in the car on the ride home, being helped into the living room, and then lying on my living room floor. In a matter of minutes, I was completely paralyzed from my belly button down.”

Transverse Myelitis affects the spinal cord and causes the immune system to attack a certain area. It attacked a very low region of her back. In some cases, TM has been known to go as high as the neck region, which leaves victims quadriplegics. With onset very fast, Dana’s parents, both physicians, raced her to Children’s Hospital’s emergency room, where she was treated with steroids. She credits the steroid treatment as the reason she is able to feel her legs now and stand/walk very limitedly.

“Initially I was told that any sort of return was impossible, so I consider myself to be extremely lucky,” she said.

When asked if she felt questions dealing with her medical situation may have been too insensitive, Dana responded promptly and pleasantly: “Please don’t feel rude by asking me these questions. They used to bother me, but I’m at a stage now where I’d rather educate people about what happened to me instead of hiding it.”

Dana has been playing tennis for 5 ½ years; the last three years she’s played competitive basketball, too. She credits her mom for getting her into sports. Her mom drove her to various sports camps, while Dana admitted to screaming all the way, only to find herself two hours later with a huge smile on her face.

“I fell in love with wheelchair sports immediately,” she said.

At San Diego Adaptive Sports Foundation (SDASF), Dana met Marla Knox, a woman she credits for her athletic success.

“She introduced me to the SDASF basketball team, called San Diego Hammer,” Dana said. “I played the last two years in high school for that team and finished second in the nation.”

Dana’s mom took her to a Coronado tennis camp several years ago. Once again Dana balked at the idea at first, but after only five minutes, she loved the camp. While she didn’t feel as though she would be a great player, she says that something clicks inside of her when she is out on the court.

“It’s scary being out there by yourself, but it is incredibly rewarding, too,” she said.

University of Arizona is the only American university that has a reputable wheelchair tennis team. Many colleges have basketball and track teams, but in the United States, tennis is less popular, unlike other nations. Dana is part of the wheelchair tennis team as well as the women’s basketball team. She travels with each team to various tournaments locally or nationally. In regard to her academic major, she is leaning toward speech pathology.

When Dana comes home for her Thanksgiving break, she will probably visit some of her mentors, including Steve Halverson, a private tennis coach who helped fine-tune her game. She might peek in at basketball practice at Muni gym in Balboa Park on a Saturday to see some wheelchair basketball practice. No doubt she will also open some books since she is enrolled in the honors college at U of A.

Her tennis tournament season will run from February to September, although the team trains year-round. Basketball is “good cardio for tennis,” according to Dana. Her life is busy with two sports and mandatory study halls for athletes.

Dana has a keen zest for life. She has memories of trips overseas at places like Nottingham, England last summer, where she distinguished herself at World Team Cup, analogous to Davis Cup. The sky is the limit and then some for this young woman, whose enthusiasm should be bottled and sprinkled on the rest of us.

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