EZRA FRECH PLACES two black packing containers in his backpack and jumps on his electrical scooter to journey a couple of blocks to the College of Southern California, the place he’s about to present his professors an excellent motive for having missed the primary three weeks of the semester.
The packing containers include the 2 gold medals the 19-year-old simply gained on the 2024 Paralympics in Paris, within the 100-meter and the excessive leap for the T63 classification (athletes with a single-leg amputation above the knee).
“It is USC; they’re identified for his or her Olympians,” says Frech, who was born with congenital limb variations. “I do know the professors can perceive the Olympics, however I wasn’t certain in the event that they even realized the Paralympics had been occurring.”
As Frech, sporting shorts and a T-shirt, waits at a stoplight on Jefferson Boulevard close to downtown Los Angeles, two USC college students not-so-subtly whisper, “Is that that Paralympian?” One pupil takes out her telephone and snaps an image of him crossing the road. By the point Frech arrives on the Cinematic Arts constructing, a number of individuals have stopped him to ask for pictures.
“I had been acknowledged earlier than Paris, a little bit bit, due to the Tokyo Paralympics and my social media the place I posted every thing from my incapacity to coaching to modeling for vogue manufacturers, however by no means to this extent,” Frech says. “I could not consider it, actually. It simply made me really feel like, ‘Wow, that is taking place. I am right here for a goal and motive.'” Frech retains his gold medals in his backpack for his first few weeks of college, handing them to anybody who needs to place them round their necks.
Frech has been within the nationwide highlight because the 2020 Tokyo Video games, the place he was featured within the advertisements from Workforce USA and NBC. He is additionally one of many faces of the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Video games in Los Angeles, the place his Angel Metropolis Sports activities basis offers sports activities clinics and competitors alternatives to individuals with disabilities. With a social media following of greater than 250,000, and celebrities reminiscent of Selena Gomez reposting his achievements, Frech gained the eye of the style world, the place he has modeled for designers reminiscent of Hugo Boss.
However Paris introduced new ranges of fame to Frech, who, on his solution to class on this clear September day, is aware of he is making historical past simply by being on USC’s campus. As the primary above-the-knee amputee to be recruited to an NCAA Division I monitor and discipline program — not to mention the winningest program within the nation — Frech’s aim is to point out the world that an athlete with a incapacity can compete in opposition to the perfect faculty athletes with out disabilities.
He embraces the strain of that aim with USC’s outside monitor and discipline season simply months away. It will likely be a season through which he’ll wrestle to medal as he confronts the challenges of such competitors, and the place he’ll hear from coaches, teammates and people he has impressed that his effort and dedication are what matter essentially the most. He’ll hear these messages, however he’ll additionally resolve to make the marks.
“For me, that is life or loss of life,” Frech says. “I consider what I do out on the monitor, my marks, my medals, all affect how the world views disabilities. I genuinely consider my goal on this Earth is to normalize incapacity, be an instance of what is attainable as an amputee.”
HIGH JUMPER SAM Grewe, now Ezra’s mentor and Workforce USA teammate, grew to become the primary amputee to compete in NCAA Division I monitor and discipline when he walked onto Notre Dame’s monitor and discipline program in 2019. When Frech was in highschool, he realized there weren’t any adaptive applications on the faculties he needed to attend. So he made it his aim to turn into the primary above-the-knee athlete to be recruited to a Division I program.
“I needed to do one thing nobody’s ever finished earlier than,” Frech says. “Trailblazing is in my DNA. I like pursuing issues that appear not possible.”
Frech, who gained gold within the excessive leap on the World Para Athletics Junior Championships at 15 and positioned fifth within the excessive leap on the Tokyo Paralympic Video games at 16, reached out to a whole bunch of NCAA coaches throughout his junior and senior years at Brentwood College in Los Angeles. “Our present marks to make the squad are seven meters within the lengthy leap and 1.96 meters within the excessive leap,” one coach wrote to Frech. “We have now some guys on the squad who will not be fairly at these marks but, however they’re primarily decathletes or produce other occasions.”
These marks grew to become a recurring theme within the coaches’ responses. “I spotted that lots of it needed to do with the numbers alone,” he says. “And though I used to be making an attempt to do every thing to get there, I feel it was additionally a little bit bit that some coaches weren’t prepared to take a threat on a child who was an amputee. There’s lots of variables and unknowns with that. And possibly they simply did not know if I used to be going to hit them within the time interval, or ever.”
On the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics, 16-year-old Frech positioned fifth within the excessive leap with a private greatest 1.80 meters and eighth within the lengthy leap with 5.85 meters. Shortly after, he was leaping 6.20 meters within the lengthy leap and 1.83 meters within the excessive leap. Between his junior and senior years in highschool, Frech raised his marks to six.86 meters within the lengthy leap and 1.95 meters within the excessive leap. In 2023, Frech set a world document and earned the gold medal within the males’s excessive leap T63 class with 1.95 meters on the world championship. Earlier than his Paralympics and worlds experiences, Frech held the title for top leap on the World Para Athletics Junior Championships.
“I wanted somebody to consider within the imaginative and prescient,” Frech stated. “As a result of that is the coach that I used to be going to be spending a very powerful 4 years of my profession with. And if this coach is not going to consider in me once I’m on the cusp of carrying out a selected mark, then how am I going to sit down right here with this coach and say, ‘I need to win three gold medals in L.A. in 2028 on the Paralympics’?”
The inquiries and rejections went on for almost six months. Then, in summer season of 2023, he heard from USC’s newly employed leaping coach, Jeff Petersmeyer.
“The primary time I noticed him leap, he simply stored making bars,” Petersmeyer stated. “He simply stored making bars, and I used to be actually impressed. And I used to be like, ‘Man, this man’s acquired some potential.’ You may be the best excessive jumper, the additional lengthy jumper, but when it isn’t a very good match, you then’re in all probability not the appropriate particular person for us right here at USC.
“However for Ezra, it isn’t all about how excessive he jumps and the way far he jumps, it is concerning the particular person and what he brings to us and what we will deliver for him and his growth.”
By December, USC had provided Frech admission to the college with “the understanding that you’ll compete as a member of USC’s Males’s Monitor and Subject workforce throughout a minimum of your first yr of enrollment on the college.” Ezra additionally acquired the inaugural Swim With Mike Basis’s Amir Ekbatani Paralympic Scholarship, awarded to a Paralympian attending USC or UCLA.
“Ezra brings a lot to the desk with the workforce,” Petersmeyer stated. “His power, his drive, his resolve, his dedication, his charisma. Every part is so necessary and salient to what we’re making an attempt to do as a workforce. Having Ezra prepare with the upperclassmen who’ve titles and data already is so necessary to not solely his success however the success of them too. He is a invaluable member of this workforce.”
ON MAY 11, 2005, Bahar Soomekh lay within the hospital mattress at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, her new child son wrapped in a blanket in her arms. She wasn’t conscious of the pandemonium taking place round her within the supply room.
Soomekh heard her husband, Clayton, asking everybody to depart the room. “What is going on on?” Soomekh remembers asking. She noticed her physician pacing forwards and backwards. “What’s taking place?” Soomekh yelled.
Extra docs piled into the supply room and took the new child out of his mom’s arms. Bahar and Clayton had been instructed their son was born with congenital limb variations — a situation the place the limbs don’t totally develop or type whereas the child is within the womb. Bodily, the new child did not have a left knee, left fibula or 4 fingers on his left hand. His left leg was curved up towards his waist, and his left arm and hand had been curled towards his chest. Regardless of quite a few assessments and 3D ultrasounds in the course of the being pregnant, docs missed the indicators of a congenital situation.
Lower than 24 hours later, docs instructed the brand new mother and father that their son’s leg must be amputated and mentioned choices for surgical procedures that would supply mobility on his left hand. Soomekh’s thoughts raced. How is he going to be at college? Is he going to have issues? Are children going to make enjoyable of him? Bully him? What’s his life going to be like?
The brand new mother and father selected a reputation for his or her new child: Ezra. The biblical title that means “assist” or “helper” in Hebrew spoke to the mother and father.
At 2 years previous, Frech underwent groundbreaking surgical procedure to amputate his left leg and transplant his left massive toe to his left hand. Frech’s surgeons, at Boston Kids’s Hospital pioneered the process with the aim of bettering hand operate and permitting engagement in bodily actions. Whereas his mother and father made some extent of by no means hiding his disabilities, as he grew older, Frech started to appreciate how his physique was completely different from these of different individuals he noticed.
When he was 4, the yr he acquired his first prosthetic leg, Frech was watching himself within the toilet mirror at his residence in Brentwood, tears streaming down his face. He known as to his mom. “Who seems like this, Mother? Who? Nobody is like me,” Frech sobbed. “Why did God choose me to not have the leg? Why did God choose me to not have the fingers?”
This was the primary time Soomekh had seen her son break down over his disabilities. “Take a look at me,” she instructed him. “Keep in mind your title. Ezra, which suggests to assist, which suggests to show. Your goal is to assist and train the world about the fantastic thing about incapacity. God picked you as a result of you are going to change the world.”
“Every part we did for Ezra was to construct him up,” Soomekh says. “I might inform him, ‘Ez, put your head up. Stroll along with your chest out. I would like you to stroll into each room, each park and look and stare down everyone in that room. You allow them to know you arrived.'”
A number of years later, on the grassy discipline at Brentwood College, 6-year-old Frech cradled a soccer in his left arm and seemed round to see who was open. He was taking part in flag soccer along with his classmates, and he was the quarterback. With just a few yards between him and the tip zone, Frech took off operating.
As he picked up pace, he realized his prosthetic leg was beginning to detach. Inside a matter of seconds, Frech’s operating blade flew off his physique and landed in entrance of 4 children from the opposing workforce. Everybody froze. Nonetheless clutching the soccer, he hopped into the tip zone for a landing.
“In all places I went in public, individuals had been staring and pointing fingers and whispering. I felt like a zoo animal,” Frech says. “I used to be battling my very own insecurities, battling my very own notion of myself. The best way I acquired by way of that was genuinely realizing that there was nothing I might do. I would as effectively take advantage of out of my life.”
By his tenth birthday, sports activities had turn into an enormous a part of that life. “After I was taking part in a sport, I wasn’t eager about the truth that I used to be the one particular person at my faculty with a incapacity,” he says. “I used to be simply one of many athletes.”
Enjoying on a membership basketball workforce, Frech practiced a couple of instances every week along with his teammates and coaches. However he would dedicate time in his yard, earlier than and after faculty, to honing his expertise, dribbling the basketball between his proper leg and left prosthetic, navigating his personal mobility on the court docket.
At observe and on recreation days, Frech displayed unwavering confidence. However as his expertise developed, so did the disparaging feedback. At some point throughout basketball observe, Frech heard his coach yelling, “Are you guys kidding me? You are letting the child with one leg rating on you proper now?”
“Underestimating me in all probability pisses me off essentially the most,” Frech says. “I all the time needed to go the additional size to show my value, as a result of it was so unlikely that the child with the incapacity was going to be a starter on the workforce.”
“I’M READY TO go,” Frech says, as he walks onto the sector at Allyson Felix Stadium on USC’s campus.
It is February, lower than one month away from his collegiate debut, and Frech has arrived on the monitor nearly an hour earlier than his teammates. He begins his warmup routine. After a couple of minutes, he removes his strolling prosthetic and wipes down the higher a part of his left thigh. Sliding on a rubber protecting, he pushes his operating blade onto his left thigh. Frech jogs up and down the turf discipline.
He removes his operating blade and replaces it along with his leaping prosthetic. “I am able to go,” he says once more.
With teammates Elias Gerald and Brady Palen and Coach Petersmeyer standing adjoining to the excessive leap, Frech walks to his beginning mark. In his first try, he clears the bar at 1.90 meters. Bouncing off the intense pink mat, Frech races again to the beginning mark. “Let’s go once more,” he says. Catapulting off his proper leg, he rotates his physique to face his chest towards the sky and positions his left prosthetic to swing over the bar. Creating a spot between his physique and the bar, Frech clears it with room to boost the bar much more.
Operating right into a curve along with his prosthetic, Frech has little room for error within the excessive leap. And not using a foot or ankle on his left leg, he cannot strike the bottom in an angled place. As a substitute, he should run on the skin of the prosthetic, which will increase his possibilities of slipping or falling. Whereas propelling himself over the bar, Frech would not have any management over the decrease a part of his prosthetic leg.
“If I place the blade actually centimeters to the left, proper entrance or again off in any route, it is going to throw off your entire run and every thing shall be tousled,” Frech says. “I’ve gotten actually good at studying learn how to place it over the past 19 years so I understand how to place it in the appropriate place. As soon as I am within the air, the prosthetic leg would not present me with a ton of momentum the identical method swinging an able-bodied leg would. The rationale I miss bars is as a result of the blade takes it off.”
Springing off the mat, Frech strikes to the aspect to look at a replay video from his coach’s telephone. Catching his breath, Frech watches carefully as his teammates put together for his or her jumps.
Having not too long ago returned from successful the NCAA Division I males’s indoor nationwide championship — the thirty second nationwide championship for the Trojans males — Gerald and Palen are two of the perfect jumpers within the nation. Clearing above 2.0 meters frequently, the 2 upperclassmen set the usual for USC’s workforce. As the 2 took turns clearing above 2 meters, Frech centered on their type and power.
“Having these three guys prepare collectively is so necessary to success, and Ezra’s growth goes to be enhanced by having Brady and Elias,” Petersmeyer says. “Realistically, this season, we would like him to earn a spot on the Massive Ten roster. I do know that is one thing he is making an attempt to realize. He must get sooner and stronger, and that’ll occur.”
Retreating again to the boys’s locker room, Frech grabs at his telephone and begins scrolling on social media. He shakes his head in disbelief. “Are you able to consider this?” Frech says to Gerald and Palen, exhibiting them his telephone. After posting movies on social media of him clearing bars at observe from the previous few weeks, in anticipation of his season opener, Frech acquired a flood of feedback and messages: “Is not this dishonest?” “How is that this not a bonus?” “Bro has a in-built spring!” “You are dishonest.”
“Folks do not perceive how a prosthetic works,” Frech says. “They do not perceive the disabled neighborhood. They usually simply say ignorant stuff that makes completely zero sense. However normally the nice feedback outweigh the unhealthy.
“However ever since posting about USC, it is positively elevated.”
A number of hours later, Frech sits in his automobile and hits document on his telephone. The following day, he uploads a reel on Instagram: “Folks say I’ve a bonus. Let’s discuss it.
“If having a prosthetic leg was dishonest, then why is my world document within the lengthy leap, 100-meter and excessive leap method lower than an able-bodied athlete?”
Within the weeks following, Frech competed for USC at 4 invitationals the place he battled to discover a place on the leaderboard. After claiming second within the excessive leap and seventh within the lengthy leap on the first outside meet of the yr, the Trojan Invitational, Frech traveled with the workforce to the LSU Battle of the Bayou, the place he didn’t clear a sound peak and did not place on the leaderboard. Ending twenty seventh within the lengthy leap on the sixty fifth annual Mt. SAC Relays in April, Frech knew his first season was coming to a detailed. In his final meet with the workforce, on the USC vs. UCLA Invitational, Frech completed fifth within the excessive leap and seventh within the lengthy leap.
“It is disappointing to not carry out my greatest,” Frech says. “I do know what I am able to, and I do know I’ve what it takes to get there. We knew that there was going to be a studying curve and that it could take a while.”
USC went on to win its thirty third males’s nationwide championship in June.
“Ezra wasn’t one of many jumpers for us on the nationwide championships, however he confirmed up and gave it his all,” Petersmeyer says. “He helped us win these titles. He is a invaluable member of the workforce.”
This summer season, as Frech prepares for the 2025 World Para Athletics Championships in October, he is not shy about his targets for his subsequent season with the Trojans.
“I’ll make the Massive 12 workforce. I’ll journey to extra away meets. And I’ll proceed to enhance my expertise and develop.
“It wasn’t anticipated that I might come out and win every thing in faculty. That is new territory. However I am right here,” Frech says.
WHEN FRECH WAS 12, he sprinted to the center of a grassy discipline, away from different opponents and oldsters. He pounded his fingers in opposition to his head and began crying.
It was the 2013 Endeavor Video games in Oklahoma, Frech’s first time taking part in sporting occasions alongside different athletes with disabilities. The 8-year-old’s father, Clayton Frech, signed him up for every thing, together with each monitor and discipline occasion.
Frech tried the lengthy leap first. Along with his operating blade securely connected, Frech took off down the runway. He sprang into the air and landed within the sand. “We had no thought what we had been doing,” Clayton Frech says. “It was his first time long-jumping. He was simply operating and leaping.” However then, Frech jumped farther and farther, quickly breaking the youth document in lengthy leap.
Later within the day, within the excessive leap, Frech ran towards the mat and flung himself within the air. His prosthetic hit the bar. Among the grownup athletes in attendance began giving him pointers to manage his prosthetic and carry himself excessive sufficient over the bar.
After a number of failed makes an attempt, Frech scurried to the center of the grassy discipline adjoining to the excessive leap occasion. “I used to be so upset about how I jumped,” Frech says. “This was my first time ever high-jumping. I do not even know what I used to be evaluating myself to, why I used to be so upset. I used to be so aggressive. It is not even aggressive in opposition to different individuals however aggressive in opposition to what I consider I am able to.”
Clayton Frech noticed a necessity for extra sporting occasions and clinics for kids and adults with bodily disabilities. Quickly after that first Endeavor Video games expertise, he created Angel Metropolis Sports activities, a nonprofit devoted to offering free entry to adaptive sports activities alternatives for youth, veterans and different adults in Southern California. The group hosts the Angel Metropolis Video games annually in L.A., with sports activities clinics and competitions.
5 years later, in 2018, Frech walked onto the monitor at Harvard-Westlake faculty in Los Angeles. He watched as a younger boy hurled himself over the excessive leap bar on the fifth annual Angel Metropolis Video games. Nathan Kuhn, a 7-year-old born with congenital limb variations, was clearing bar after bar. “Is that this his first time?” Frech requested the officers. “That is unbelievable.”
Kuhn, impressed by Frech’s social media posts as he educated for Tokyo, had requested his mom, Patty Kuhn, if he might attend the Angel Metropolis Video games and check out “Ezra’s occasions.”
“I simply needed to be like him,” says Kuhn, now 12. “I watched movies of him leaping over the bar, and I believed if he might do it, then possibly I might strive it too. It was the primary time I ever noticed anybody that seemed like me do one thing like that.”
Kuhn is within the stands at USC in March as Frech prepares to compete within the excessive leap competitors of his first collegiate meet.
Frech swaps out his prosthetic for his excessive leap blade. There are solely 4 opponents within the excessive leap occasion. Gerald, who holds the collegiate document for top leap at 2.30 meters, instructed Frech when he joined the workforce, “Welcome residence. That is the place you belong.” Gerald reminds him of that in the present day. “You’re USC monitor now. Present everybody why you are right here.” Frech takes his beginning mark and clears his first try at 1.80 meters.
In his second try, Frech clears 1.85 meters. Pushing him to the highest spot on the leaderboard. Frech clears his subsequent try at 1.90 meters. For his fourth try, the bar is raised to 1.95 meters, simply above his Paris Paralympic document of 1.94.
Trying on the crowd, Frech stars clapping his fingers. “Let’s go!” he yells. The gang chants, “Ezra, Ezra, Ezra.” Kuhn nudges his mother, smiling. “That is so cool.”
With a touch towards the mat, Frech leaps over the bar earlier than snagging it with the crest of his physique. The bar drops to the mat. “Ahhh,” the gang sighs collectively. The scoreboard sparkles to disclose Frech’s second-place end, behind USC alumnus Earnest Sears III, who entered the competitors as an unaffiliated competitor and completed with a 2.15-meter greatest. Frech ties with Lengthy Seaside State’s Cytres Vives, ending forward of Harvard’s Daire Mahon.
Hugging his coach, Frech pauses on the monitor earlier than retreating to the stands to greet his household and buddies. A small crowd grows round Frech, and he shakes fingers and poses for extra pictures. Clayton pulls out Ezra’s two gold medals.
“Nathan, need to put them on?” Frech says. “You are going to get these at some point.”
The 12-year-old hangs them round his neck.
“How does it really feel?” Frech asks.
“It feels highly effective,” Kuhn says.