Kiana Solomon is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Phoenix Country Day School for AZPreps365.com

 

When Jake Pruett was growing up, a girl called him a “monster.” According to Kristen Pruett, Jake’s mother, “When he was little, he didn’t understand that because she wouldn’t get near him and she was screaming.”

 

Jake isn’t a monster, just an adult with one leg.

 

As a baby he suffered a left leg amputation when his umbilical cord was wrapped around his leg.

 

But he’s overcome that and is now working with his mother and his former swim coach, Mike Maczuga, as an assistant swim coach at Phoenix Country Day School.

 

Jake has been coaching at PCDS for around three years. He mainly works with high schoolers who have never swam before. They get put into groups and Jake works with them as they progress.

 

“I’m usually the one with the kids who really kind of just came out because they wanted to and they don’t know anything about swim. The best thing about it is watching them grow. Sometimes I have kids who can’t even swim at all till the end of the season where they’re doing laps and they don’t stop,” said Jake.

 

Kristen is also on the pool deck beside Maczuga and Jake while she coaches the divers. Kristen gets joy watching her son and Maczuga coach together.

 

Jake is an influence to the swimmers he coaches. “It’s really hard for the kids to go, ‘Oh my leg hurts,’ or ‘Oh my arm hurts,’ because well you have two arms and two legs. He gives the kids a little less reason to complain about things,” said Kristen.

 

Despite his handicap, Jake grew up around the water and was always in the pool. At the age of 14, the man who builds Jakes’s prosthetic legs encouraged him to go to a triathlon camp in Florida.

 

He told Jake, “You’ll go to Florida for a week and hang out with these guys and they will tell you what a triathlon is and they’ll teach you how to do it.”

 

“He didn’t want to do any parasports at all,” said Jake’s mother. “He wanted to play basketball, play football, and swim and do whatever but he never wanted to get into the para-movement.”

 

After much convincing from family and friends, Jake agreed to go to Florida to learn paratriathlon. This launched his career in the parasports world.

 

Jake and his family traveled to London for the World Triathlon Championships where he was ranked 14thin the paratriathlon.

 

He was not a fan of the biking portion in the triathlons. After 2013 he decided it was time to switch to only swimming.

 

For Jake, swimming is a lot different than for his two-legged counterparts. He is using all of his upper body and only using one leg to balance out his stroke. Turns are also more challenging for him. People use their legs to get off the wall. Starting off the blocks is also challenging. Everyone uses two legs to push themselves off the blocks.

 

“I don’t really struggle with these things, though,” said Jake. “I would say they’re just more of a disadvantage.”

 

In 2016 Jake went on to the Olympic Trials. He missed making the team by one spot.

 

Jake was sent to Colorado Springs to live at the Olympic Training Center. This became his job every day.

 

He woke up around 6 and went to the cafeteria to eat breakfast. Then it was off to the hot tub to loosen up his muscles. Practice started at 7 and ended at 9. Morning classes followed before weights or another swim practice in the afternoon.

 

At first, Jake didn’t want to go to Colorado. He had written his letter to decline the invitation and made up his mind to stay home.

 

“He wrote the letter and said I’m not going and I cried,” said Kristen. The tears had an impact on Jake. Kristen said, “He changed his mind because he told my daughter that he had never seen his mom cry.”

 

Although Jake ended up leaving the center after nine months because he believed it wasn’t for him, he is grateful for the experience and doesn’t regret his time spent there.

 

He returned to coaching at Phoenix Country Day School with Maczuga.

 

“Coach Mike is almost like a father to him, he taught Jacob how to swim and Jacob threw up on him in his backyard pool when he was two and a half,” said Kristen.

 

Jake has never felt he has been living with a disability. “It didn’t really bother me because I didn’t know what it was like having two legs in the beginning, so I really didn’t have to adjust or have any challenges,” said Jake.

 

Jakes’s mother added: “The doctor that amputated his leg will have moms and parents call me of kids that are having their leg amputated and they’ll say, ‘So how did you teach him to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night,’ or, ‘How’d you teach him this,’ and I’d say, ‘He just does,’ He never really had to adjust to anything.”

 

The challenge for someone who has to deal with prosthetic legs is getting new legs on a regular basis.

 

“Every single time I got a new leg though it wouldn’t feel good because every leg is different and you have to get used to it and it would take me about a month to get used to it.”

 

Jake would get a new leg about every year when he was growing up, but now it’s every two to three years.

 

About two weeks ago Jake decided it was time to stop swimming and pursue a higher education. He is currently taking classes at Scottsdale Community College and working towards a new goal in is life - to join the Phoenix Police Department.

 

The classes he is taking at SCC and the influence of his friends that are on the force have inspired Jake to begin this new journey.