Knowing No Bounds A Gymnastics Fall Left Shelli Racicot Paralyzed, But She Has Returned To The Sport With Her Daughters

Shelli (Waddell) Racicot was already an All-American gymnast at Spokane Community College when the unthinkable happened.

She fell from the uneven bars and shattered the 12th vertebra in her spine during a meet at SCC.

The 1981 accident left her a paraplegic.

Although confined to a wheelchair by the accident, the longtime Valley resident was determined to lead a normal life.

She has completed her education, undertaken a career, marriage and motherhood, has hunted and fished.

“The injury has never effected her,” says her husband of 12 years, Bob Racicot. “I don’t look at her and never have looked at her as handicapped. The wheelchair is just something that is there.”

Approaching the 20-year reunion of her graduation from Central Valley High School, it scarcely seems that long ago that Shelli Waddell was a daredevil CV gymnastics standout and track athlete.

She went on to finish third all-around for national champion SCC at the National Junior College Athletic Association championships in Baltimore.

Today, she lives in the Valley home where she was reared and, through her daughters, has returned to the sport that cost her the use of her legs.

Daughters Tiara, 8, and Malaina, 6, both compete at Northwest Gymnastics Academy and their mother is involved.

“I was dead-set against it,” said her husband, “but she said she was going to do it and I let her do it. She is very independent and very strong willed.”

Shelli was raised by her parents to be a positive person. She said she has always viewed the glass as half full rather than half empty.

“Life since high school has been way more good than bad,” she said. “I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything.”

Jo McDonald, Racicot’s coach at SCC, remembers the accident as if it were yesterday. It occurred in a meet the year after SCC had won the national title and Racicot had been named All-American.

“I still, honest to goodness, have nightmares of that two-minute span,” said McDonald, godparent to both Racicot children.

McDonald, currently a high school counselor in Corning, Calif., said that Racicot was performing a routine she had done “a billion times.”

She flipped to the upper bar, missed her catch and came down in a tight pike position that put inordinate stress on her hips.

“Typically it wouldn’t have been a problem,” said McDonald.

“Gymnasts know how to fall.”

This time proved different. Racicot was paralyzed and rushed to Holy Family Hospital for surgery.

She spent several months at St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Center. She was never allowed to be depressed, she said, because of constant visits by gymnastics teammates and members of the Spokane Chiefs hockey team, one of whom she was dating.

“Between the two groups,” said Racicot, “I think St. Luke’s was more than anxious to get rid of me.”

Not, she said, before she was able to drive a car equipped with hand controls. Racicot recalls, humorously, a story about her early attempt to drive.

It was in a van owned by another paralytic who went along for the ride. She hit the throttle, the van surged forward and the owner toppled over in his chair, unable to get up.

“Shoot!” she screamed. “What do you want me to do?”

“It’s OK,” he answered, “just keep going.” She did.

Another time she was on her way to school. Her van was outside the garage and she figured she could push the button activating the automatic garage door and slip out beneath before it closed.

The descending door hit her in the chest and knocked her backwards out of the wheelchair. She slid into the driveway while her chair kept rolling out into the street.

“I called to my neighbor who was 80 and told him a terrible thing just happened,” she said.

He asked, “Do you want some help? Do you want me to open the garage door for you?”

“No,” she answered, “but can you get my chair in the street and help me up?”

Bob Racicot tells about rigging a Honda 4-wheeler for his wife to ride on hunting trips. She took off down the street on a test ride and was soon pulled over at a radar speed trap.

Good humor made adjustment to life in a wheelchair easier than did the injuries that came with being confined to it.

“Just when I started getting the hang of things, there were a lot of setbacks,” she said.

Pressure sores, the result of sitting, required surgeries. She broke her femur in a fall while trying to retrieve a glass that had fallen to the bottom of her dishwasher.

Currently, Racicot is fighting a staph infection that resulted from a scrape on the back of her thigh.

Between infections and operations, Racicot completed college at SCC and Eastern Washington University. She’s been employed by the federal government since 1987 at the Veterans Administration Hospital, where she works as a telecomunications specialist.

She met her husband through a friend of a friend of one of her brothers. They married in February of 1987. A salesman for John Morrell and Co., a meat supplier, Bob Racicot works out of the home they bought from Shelli’s parents. It makes it easier for him to help with housework.

Bob is an avid hunter and fisherman who got Shelli an emotionally cathartic antelope hunting trip for the handicapped to Wyoming about 10 years ago.

“We were in bed watching TV and I was reading a hunting magazine, saw the application and jokingly filled it out,” he said.

She was one of 12,000 entrants and one of 18 selected.

“On Easter he brings me home a rifle and says, `Guess what, honey, I entered you in this drawing and you’re one of them who gets to go,”’ she said. “I didn’t know how to react, but went and it was really fun.”

Their two daughters were born naturally, although the youngest arrived prematurely.

Both are aware how their mother was paralyzed, but became gymnasts anyway. Tiara, a Level 5 team competitor, finished second all-around in sectionals this year and was in the top eight in beam and floor exercise at state.

“I wasn’t sure how I’d react when I got back into it,” said Racicot, who helps NWGA with public relations. “I thought I’d be a little nervous, but they really took to it.”

She said she figures it’s better for her to watch than coach, although, “that’s not to say I don’t say something now and then.”

The sport, particularly the equipment, has changed tremendously. The bars are rounder, thinner and springier and pre-set for giant swings, rather than set to each individual gymnast as in her day. Floor exercise is done on a spring-floor, rather than mats. Even the balance beam has more give.

Racicot said she doesn’t miss not competing.

“I kind of feel like I did my time,” she said. “It was great and I loved it. But there are other things I’d rather be doing and ways to spend my time.”

Her kids have kept her busy with school, gymnastics and dance. A typical mom, she gets home from work, takes them to activities, feeds them and tucks them into bed. By then, she’s ready for bed herself.

But she still takes on a challenge like before the accident, remembering that her parents would not allow her to wallow in self pity.

“Every day is a new experience with her,” said her husband.