'You Just Have To Be Strong': The Gracie Gregory Story

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Gracie Gregory was born to be a swimmer.

Literally.

"My mom swam in college, and she planned me and my sister to have good birthdays for swimming," Gregory laughed. "We're both born in August, which is the perfect swimming birthday because the season typically starts in September. So having a birthday in August, when you age up, it's right before the season starts…

"My parents put me in the water pretty much as soon as I was born. I was just a few months old, and my mom would take me to our local YMCA and play in the water with me every weekend until I could swim on my own…

"She likes to say I could swim before I could walk." Gracie Gregory

Unsurprisingly for someone who got such an early start in the sport, Gregory dominated her competition in the pool from a young age. "I was six years old, racing people my age, and I would just win all the time," the Williamsburg, Va. native shrugged. "We would get little rubber ducks for every heat that we would win at swim meets, and I'd collect them easily…

"They would have different ducks for different holidays…then I'd start getting duplicates because I'd [already] gotten all of them. That was my thing: 'Oh, I have more ducks than everybody else.' I still have all of those ducks in my room at home in a little basket: probably close to 100 of them. I used to have them on my windowsill — I have two windows— but I ran out of room!"

While the sport came easily to Gregory for most of her life, that all changed four years ago. The national anthem was about to play to get a swim meet underway, and Gregory began feeling like she was going to pass out. "I'm like, 'I can't stand up right now,'" she recalled. A cold shower didn't really help, and although Gregory completed her first event, she still didn't feel well…or race well, for that matter.

"I'm probably just having a bad day or something," she told herself. That is, until she was in the warm-down pool afterward and simply stopped being able to swim.

"I couldn't do anything. I couldn't move. I couldn't get out of the pool," Gregory explained. "One of my friends swam out to me and pulled me to the wall, then helped me get out…

"It was such an out-of-body experience. I know that I'm immobile at that moment, and there's nothing I can do about it. I started panicking because I couldn't breathe, and my dad took me straight to urgent care. They got me a wheelchair; I couldn't move [my arms or legs]. I couldn't walk to the locker room to change, so I was still in my swimsuit."

A flurry of doctor visits ensued over the next few weeks after the initial symptoms subsided, ultimately confirming what Gregory's mother suspected right away. The 15-year-old was diagnosed with POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome), which causes a significantly-increased heart rate when changing body positions. The severity of the disease's effects can vary based on the person, and awareness of the syndrome has been growing over the past years and decades, including making national news when Olympian Katie Ledecky revealed in a 2024 memoir that she battles POTS.

For Gregory, who had never known life without a pool, the diagnosis was devastating. "If I can't even walk, how am I supposed to swim a mile?", she wondered. A treatment regimen of medications brought mild improvement, allowing Gregory to resume attending school and go to swim practice, but still, she struggled to make it through more than half of a practice session before having to call it a day.

One neurologist suggested that Gregory take an extended break from swimming, going so far as to tell her, "I don't think you're going to have a very good season."

Gracie Gregory

That idea was a non-starter for Gregory; in fact, it motivated her to prove the medical expert wrong. "It was really, really difficult honestly: Trying to keep swimming at the level that I'm swimming at while having to not pass out," she admitted. "In the end, I think I was just too stubborn and too determined, like, 'I can't just not do this!'"

The next couple of years brought a number of ups and downs as Gregory struggled to adjust to her 'new normal.' There were high finishes and titles at the state meet, followed by underwhelming performances at other championship-level events. Beginning a weekly IV saline fluid treatment before her senior season eventually brought a bit of a breakthrough. "That helped so much; I felt like a new person!", Gregory said. As a result, she accomplished her goal of qualifying for junior nationals in the 400 individual medley, her signature event.

The routine of competition days became second nature for Gregory: Take her medicine, have a wheelchair nearby, make sure lifeguards are ready to pull her from the pool after the always-taxing IM race just in case, drink plenty of water, eat salty foods ('pickles and stuff!') and grab a chocolate milk afterward.

However, her dream of continuing her swimming career in college seemed uncertain. Gregory even took a 'gap year' after graduating from high school in 2024 to try and find the perfect fit. Despite her perseverance, though, staff members at programs that she was interested in competing for (whether coaches or athletic trainers) proved reluctant to take a chance on a potential student-athlete with POTS.

"One athletic trainer sent me an email a few days after [my call with her] and basically told me that I should stop swimming because no NCAA team would take me," Gregory said.

Gregory's club coach took up the cause, writing an editorial on SwimSwam.com to plead Gregory's case when it looked like things were 'back to square one.' And that's when the Miami University coaching staff, who was already recruiting Gracie's younger sister Elizabeth, entered the picture.

"They had a call after this story came out, and the assistant coach said, 'Oh, I didn't know that your sister wasn't committed already!' Then he reached out to me and said he wanted to talk to me…and I guess the rest is history," Gracie Gregory smiled.

"Gracie was struggling to find her place, especially with her medical condition: There were a lot of schools that were a little nervous to have her," Miami head coach Samantha Pitter added. "So on the front end, it was just figuring out and making sure that would work here and that our athletic training staff felt really comfortable…

"And luckily, there was a connection [with our assistant coaches]: It gave her a little sense of familiarity with this place, which was good. That really just springboarded the whole thing, which was awesome…and watching her swim and seeing her progress, even through a couple difficult years, I [could tell]: Once she figures out all the things that she needs to succeed in the pool and outside the pool, she's going to take off.

"I was really excited about that."

Fast forward to the present, and Gregory's potential —both now and in the future—is apparent. In Miami's most recent meet, a home victory over Eastern Michigan last Friday, Gregory raced to victory in both the 200 butterfly and the 500 freestyle as the RedHawks defeated the Eagles 178-116. The freshman's latter race was basically over by the time the first 100 ended, as Gregory had already steadily pulled away to take a full-body-length lead. When she finally touched the wall to claim another first-place finish, she was a full 10 seconds ahead of her nearest competitor.

Gracie Gregory

"She's so talented across all of the different strokes," Pitter pointed out. "Whatever she wanted to swim, honestly, she could be really good at…

"She is very dedicated. Very loyal. She's a great teammate; she checks all the boxes for what we're trying to build here…

"She continues to excel at every challenge, and I'm just looking forward to seeing how it ends up."

Watching from the stands Friday, it was impossible for an average onlooker to tell that Gregory continues to struggle with the disease that has so greatly changed her life. "I'm a lot better now; I only pass out when I swim the 400 IM," Gregory said matter-of-factly. "Because it's all the strokes, and POTS is a positional thing, I think the combination of going from on my stomach to on my back to bobbing up and down to freestyle plus fully exerting myself [still] triggers it…

"But I just tell our coaches and athletic trainer every time I'm about to swim the '4IM' and they come pull me out after, and it's fine!", she concluded.

Gregory has benefited from a support system of staffers and teammates who will do whatever it takes to help her, including driving her to weekly infusion treatments in Oxford (and yes, even lifting her up out of the pool when needed!). And next year, that network will grow when younger sister Elizabeth Gregory joins the RedHawk roster to team up with Gracie.

"One of the main things that went into my decision [to attend Miami] was, I know I will have all of their support. That was something I needed, being this far away from home…they've been so unbelievably supportive. After going through what I did [with other schools], I didn't think I was going to be able to find that," Gracie Gregory said.

At the same time, Gregory is helping encourage and support others who are fighting her same battle. "I've had people come up to me at meets after I pass out and say, 'I have POTS too. Can I reach out to you?' So I've had people follow me on Instagram and ask how I've been dealing with it, because they've just been diagnosed," Gregory continued. "It's nice to see that I've been able to reach and help other people, even if it's in a way that I wouldn't necessarily choose…

Gracie Gregory

"I think getting POTS made me love swimming more. I had more of a drive. I was more determined. That was my motivation: I have to prove this doctor wrong, I have to get these times, [and] I have to prove to myself that I can still do it."

While Gregory has accomplished her goal of competing for the Red and White, she still has more items on her checklist as her collegiate career unfolds. Win a team MAC championship. Win an individual MAC title. Qualify for the NCAA national championships.

And if determination and resolve has anything to do with it, it would seem like Gregory is well on her way to meeting even more of those milestones over the next few seasons.

The bottom line, from the perspective of this inspiring student-athlete?

"Don't give up on your dreams. Even if things are thrown at you, you can still power through.

"You just have to be strong."

Find more Front Row Features at: MiamiRedHawks.com/FrontRowFeatures

Gracie Gregory and the Miami University swimming and diving teams are back in action this Saturday, Jan. 24 at 1 p.m. for a co-ed meet against Kenyon and Xavier at the Corwin M. Nixon Aquatic Center in Oxford. Admission is free.

Miami Ohio University Athletics

'You Just Have To Be Strong': The Gracie Gregory Story

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