Stay-Focused divers with disabilities back in the water

The sea is dead calm as the Red Sail dive boat pulls out from Seven Mile Beach and the divers check their gear and get ready to head underwater. For this group, it’s not just a matter of sorting out their dive bags and replacing their sunglasses with scuba masks; these divers are also putting away their wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs and crutches before strapping air tanks to their backs.

They’re with Stay-Focused, a US-based charity that empowers teens and young people by teaching them to dive in the Cayman Islands.

These divers are the third of three groups to dive here over consecutive weeks. They’re the ‘reunion’ group, and it’s their second time on island, having learned to dive here in 2019. They were supposed to return in 2020, but COVID scuppered that plan. The two groups, over the previous two weeks, learned to dive for the first time, and will come back next year, if all goes according to plan.

Among those on board on that calm Sunday morning, was Alicia Guerrero, 19, from Wapato, Washington, who is on the US Paralympic shot put and discus team and plays on the University of Illinois women’s wheelchair basketball team.

“I had some issues with my ears at the very start, but it was just like it was back in 2019,” she said. “I was able to remember everything, especially with all the help from Stay-Focused. It was a really fun experience to be able to get back in the water again.”

Alicia lost her left leg in a lawnmower accident when she was 2 years old. She dives with one fin currently, although in 2019, she dived with no fins, using a combination of kicking and swimming with arms to propel herself forward.

Most of the others in the group go barefoot or with dive booties, moving through the water with their arms. All the divers are athletes from a variety of disciplines – swimming, basketball, sled hockey, track and field – and many have impressive arm and upper body strength.

Kaela Cruz, 20, from New Jersey, said she’d missed diving, and Sunday’s first dive was “really surreal” because of some of the wildlife they encountered, including a nurse shark at the Oro Verde wreck and at least two turtles.

Kaela, a cancer survivor, was diagnosed with osteosarcoma (bone cancer) just before her 5th birthday in January 2007. She underwent an above-the-knee amputation four months later. She has been cancer free since. Now, she runs, swims, surfs, competes in triathlons – and, of course, dives.

Getting back into diving after a three-year hiatus was a “little bit” difficult, she admitted, but a refresher session in the pool at The Ritz-Carlton reminded her of the various underwater hand signals and what to do in certain situations.

Alicia, Kaela and their fellow divers are the latest cohort of the Stay-Focused programme, which was founded by Roger Muller in 2003. Each year, COVID notwithstanding, the group brings teens from the US to Grand Cayman to introduce them to diving or refresh their skills.

Ryan Chalmers, director of development, whom Muller describes as his “heir apparent” in Stay-Focused, is also a dive master who works with first-time divers or those struggling with certain skills.

Chalmers – a former Paralympic athlete who once traversed the US in his wheelchair, covering 3,320 miles in the ‘Push Across America’ challenge – has been involved with Stay-Focused since 2005, when he took part in the diving programme at 15 years old after being introduced to Muller at a junior nationals meet where he was competing.

“Roger asked me if I wanted to dive, and I said, ‘Sure, why not? Let’s learn to dive,'” Chalmers said.

He said it’s always interesting to see the reactions of the new divers as they get in the water for the first time.

“There’s no one boilerplate response to that first dive,” he said. “It’s unique to each individual. Some love the fish. Some love the buoyancy. Some love that feeling of just flying. Some love that they were able to accomplish a skill they were nervous about. Or they got to see a big tarpon and reacted OK when they thought they’d be nervous.”

Under the programme, all participants begin with the PADI Scuba Diver certification, which allows them to dive at a maximum depth of 40 feet under the supervision of a professional diver. Over the years, they can progress through to higher levels.

Caymanian interns lend helping hand

As well as teaching youngsters from the US to dive, Stay-Focused each year takes on teenage Caymanian interns, who do the same PADI Scuba Diver course as the visitors. The interns also assist in carrying equipment and helping out the visiting divers.

This year’s interns are Valentina Bustos, 19, from Clifton Hunter High School; and Jason Ricketts, 15, and Marcus Lagman, 16, from John Gray High School.

Under the programme, each intern stays at the same hotel as the group of divers they’re working with, and their meals, dives and training are provided free of charge.

This year’s trio of interns say they have all made strong connections with the people in their dive groups.

“I’ve got a whole group chat with my buddies,” Jason said. “We’ve become very good friends.”

“Me and my roommate, we became best friends,” Marcus said.

One young diver who visited earlier this month was visually impaired, and she had very limited sight.

Marcus, who was diving with her group, described a special moment for her. “We were diving at Sunset House and she got a chance to touch and feel the mermaid’s face there,” he said, “so that was a really nice experience for her.”

One of the best things about diving with the Stay-Focused visitors is getting to meet and become friends with people with disabilities, the interns said, as they don’t usually encounter them in their day-to-day lives.

Asked what challenges the interns faced when working with each group, Jason responded, “communicating with them at the start”, because he didn’t know what to expect, but within just a short while of chatting with them, “we were best buddies”.

“I guess when you meet someone for the first time, you wonder if you’re going to relate to them,” Valentina said.

Marcus agreed, saying, “Not that many people in Cayman that you see have disabilities.”

“It seems it’s kind of a stigma here, for people in wheelchairs,” Jason said. “That needs to change.”

“A lot of the people in my group are athletes,” said Valentina, who worked with the reunion group when they first learned to dive in 2019. “That really just opened my mind. They were more fit than me. It was just so nice to see that.”

Chalmers says the role of the interns is a vital one, because it opens routes to communication and challenges stigmas.

“There is still a stigma surrounding people with disabilities, in Cayman and in the US, and elsewhere,” he said. “It takes education and time to be able to break that stigma. There are people here on island with disabilities. So, yes, it takes time and it takes individuals like Valentina and Jason and Marcus to speak up and be an ally for the disabilities community,  and to be able to have some of these conversations to help break some of this stigma.”

Chalmers added, “That’s why we wanted to start the Caymanian internship programme, so they could be ambassadors for Stay-Focused and talk about scuba diving here.”

As a person in a wheelchair himself who dives and is a dive master, he says representation is very important among people with disabilities, and that it is can be encouraging when young divers see someone else with similar disabilities achieve what they’re aiming to do.

“Representation really does matter,” Chalmers said. “We want them to be able to understand it’s about adaptation; they can be as successful as any of their peers, but to be able to feel that way, sometimes it takes representation, so they can say ‘This person has my disability too, and this is where they went.'”

For more information about Stay-Focused, visit its website at stay-focused.org.