Inside Nick Mayhugh’s closet is a suitcase filled with gold medals.
“I don’t necessarily really care about them,” he said of the hardware he won at the Paralympics.
The medals represent victory. But for Mayhugh, and many others who compete in the Paralympics, victory is achieved not at the finish line, but at the starting block. That is where adversity is defeated simply by being in position to compete on a global stage.
“What I care about,” Mayhugh said, “is the impact that I can make on the generations to come.”
To get to the Paralympics, Mayhugh traded in his soccer cleats for track spikes. Switching shoes and changing sports in order to fulfil a dream was a minor obstacle for someone who once retaught himself how to walk.
“One of the main things I did when I was younger, I would lock myself in my room so nobody could come in, and I would just walk back and forth and teach myself how to walk without a limp in my left leg,” Mayhugh said on an episode of NBC’s “My New Favorite Olympian.”
Now 28 years old, he not only walks without a limp, he runs for gold medals in the Paralympics, winning three at the Tokyo Paralympics. His dream will once again become reality this week in Paris, as a former soccer player once told him he’d never play sports again runs for gold in track.
The Virginia native was vocal about his dreams at an early age: go to college at his mother’s alma mater the University of Maryland, become a professional soccer player and play for the national team.
His family was supportive, particularly his grandparents, Shirley and Bill Mayhugh, who were regulars at his soccer games.
Mayhugh’s family, however, was unaware of the challenges that he was silently battling. The left side of his body would not function in the same way as the right side.
Mayhugh recalled a moment when his grandpa, who hosted an overnight music show on radio station WMAL and a pregame show for the NFL team now known as the Washington Commanders, was giving him piano lessons.
“I remember sitting at the piano with him and trying to teach me how to play a song and him just getting frustrated and being like, ‘Why can’t you do this?'” Mayhugh said. “I was like, ‘Granddaddy, I don’t know. I don’t know.’ And I was just laughing about it and joking about it. He thought I was just being a goofy kid.”
Even when walking, Mayhugh had to make a concerted effort to pick up his left foot to prevent it from dragging.
“We never knew anything about Nick’s situation,” his father Scott Mayhugh said. “Me as a father, just figured Nick was right-side dominant. So, whenever we would have conversations or sports or anything, we would always say, you know, just work harder on your left side.”
Mayhugh did all he could to hide his condition.
“I wanted to be the best that I could be from a very, very early age,” he said. And [his family] didn’t see a problem with it. They were like, okay, well, he’s better than all the other kids, you know, his left foot, his left hand, it is what it is.”
When Mayhugh was 14 years old, he was rushed to the hospital after suffering a grand mal seizure, which is characterized by a loss of consciousness and violent contractions. An MRI revealed that he had cerebral palsy, the result of a stroke he had in utero.
“It created a void in that side of his brain,” Scott Mayhugh said. “And that one little area is about the size of a nickel is just filled with water, which affected the mobility of the left side of his body.”
It also jeopardized his dreams, saying it “flipped my world upside down.”
“The number one thing is, is he going to live?” Mayhugh said. “You know, is he healthy? And then they answer those questions. And I asked more questions of when can I play soccer again? And then looking me dead in the eye and telling me they don’t know if I’ll ever be able to play soccer again.”
For Mayhugh, those words became a source of motivation.
“That was his attitude from day one,” Scott Mayhugh said. “And he said, ‘I’ll prove him wrong.’ And here we are.”
NBC Sports’ Senior Olympics Editor Nick Zaccardi breaks down what paralympian Nick Mayhugh brings to Team USA.
He went on to play Division I soccer at Radford University. At 22 years old, he was made aware of the existence of the Paralympics, something he said his parents have apologized to him about for not knowing of the competition earlier in his life.
“It’s frustrating that they have to apologize to me. It’s not their fault,” he said. “It’s the community’s fault. It’s the world’s. The lack of knowledge, the lack of education, the lack of awareness in everybody to educate about the Paralympics, educate about different disabilities that are able to compete.”
Mayhugh made the U.S. Men’s National Para Soccer team in 2017. Two years later, he helped the team win its first bronze medal at the Para Pan American Games and was named the U.S. Soccer Player of the Year with a Disability.
With part of his dream fulfilled, he set out to complete another: competing at the Paralympics. Soccer, however, was not one of the sports contested three years ago at Tokyo. So, he switched sports.
He went on to win the 100m T37 and 200m T37, setting world record times in both, and also won gold in the 4x100m medley.
But again, he doesn’t do it for the medals, which is why they are inside a suitcase in his closet.
“Because I know that one day those medals aren’t going to mean anything,” said Mayhugh, who hopes to become a broadcaster like his grandpa. “And after when I leave this earth, they’re gone. Nobody’s going to remember that. They’re going to remember the impact that I had on the community.
“And I hope that there’s not another kid that has to live 22 years of their life not knowing that there was a community that they could be accepted in, that they could excel in, and they could be celebrated within and just be themselves and just be happy, you know, competing.”
Mayhugh was interviewed for My New Favorite Paralympian, a series that tells the stories of Team USA’s most inspiring athletes and the causes they champion. Subscribe to My New Favorite Paralympian wherever you get your podcasts.