Anna Stern
Meet Anna who spent her whole life competing in elite and high-performance sports programs for both soccer and rugby. Athletics was so intertwined with her identity as a person that when she became disabled at 22 years of age, she thought she had lost everything. She was no longer able to play the sports that she had dedicated so much of her time to and were also her source of community, belonging, and self-worth.
Anna is a multiple time cancer survivor and was originally diagnosed when she was 8 years old. Her disease and the long term effects of its treatments caused her disabilities. She is hard of hearing and has a neurological movement disorder called dystonia that causes hypertonia and dyskinesia that affects every single muscle on the right side of her body. She also has multiple learning disabilities, which made school and formal education very challenging. She always felt belonging within sports as it was the only thing that ever came easy to her.
“Access to sports changed my life. When I became disabled, I felt so lost, alone, and angry. I thought I had lost sports forever, which caused an identity crisis of sorts, because so much of who I was had been wrapped up in being an athlete. No longer being able to play sports on the able bodied teams I had been playing on instantly changed my day to day social interactions as well. I lost my community and sense of normalcy. Regaining access to sports brought me out of a really dark place.
Participation in sports can also be so formative growing up. Sports teach us to confront challenges, deal with failure, persevere through difficulties and build relationships and trust with the people around us. These are life skills that are transferable to everyday living, for as long as we live.”
Anna is now coaching and leads Angel City’s monthly Adaptive Functional Fitness class.
“Coaching other adaptive athletes is the greatest honor and privilege of my life. The joy that it brings me is indescribable. In my opinion Functional Fitness is very applicable as it has direct transferable impact on everyday life as a person living with a disability. What we do in the gym prepares us for the challenges of navigating the world. Increasing our independence and confidence is a byproduct of improving strength, cardiovascular endurance, and skill development within the gym. Athletes will come back to class and tell me how the strength training we do together enabled them to transfer from their wheelchair into the car independently for the first time. They will tell me how they worked up the courage to go somewhere they had never been before and when they encountered the obstacle of walking on uneven ground, they knew they could conquer it.”