DENNIS SILVA II | STAFF WRITER
MISSION— Since junior high, Mission Veterans Memorial senior Zoe Alaniz had watched his peers compete in sports.
He went to football and basketball games. He yearned to be the quarterback throwing the game-winning touchdown, or the point guard making the highlight-reel play.
But long before then, Alaniz had come to grips with his unfortunate reality. Alaniz was born with spina bifida, a spinal defect. He is paralyzed from the waist down.
“My situation wasn’t all that difficult,” Alaniz said. “I have all this support and love and affection that I get from family. That took my mind off it. Of course there are hard times, like when I first went into junior high and you get to play sports. I couldn’t do that. That’s when it hit me most.”
But late last spring, veteran Rio Grande Valley track and field coach Larry Howell was at the UIL state track and field meet, watching kids compete in the UIL’s newly created Paralympic track wheelchair division.
“That got my mind working,” Howell said. “Zoe was in my wife Kathy’s team leadership class, we gauged his interest, and here we are.
“He’s a great kid. I just wish he wasn’t a senior.”
Since then, Alaniz worked and practiced and worked some more in the shot put, and now he will be competing at the UIL state track and field meet next week in Austin. Alaniz qualified for state at the district meet in late March. He had to reach a mark of 7 feet. He obliterated that with a distance of 13 feet, 10 inches, which stands as his personal record.
Alaniz and Weslaco High’s Joe Solis, who also qualified for state next week in the 100-meter run, are the first Valley wheelchair athletes to participate in the new UIL event.
“It’s a great accomplishment, a wonderful opportunity that I’m getting,” Alaniz said. “Growing up with this, and not being able to compete in football or basketball like I wanted to, this was something I could compete in and enjoy.”
During meets, Alaniz uses a specially-designed chair that has a bar used for back-and-forth momentum when throwing.
“What I love is that he will try everything and anything,” Howell said. “He doesn’t mess around. I treat him like anybody else. I push him real hard. I don’t favor him.
“There is no easy way out. He’s a hard worker and he’s going to do well.”
Alaniz’s grandmother, Maria Esther Salinas, said the support for her grandson has been “unbelievable.”
“We were at a meet and one of the kids from Sharyland Pioneer said, ‘Zoe! If you accidentally fall off your wheelchair, just pretend you’re doing push-ups. We’ll be ready to catch you!’” said Salinas, a former coach in Mission, Kingsville and La Joya. “You see the kids compete and the reaction and I just hope and pray the Rio Grande Valley embraces it.”
There was a time when Salinas did not know if Alaniz would ever be able to compete athletically. Alaniz falls into a specific niche. He is physically disabled, yes, but has no mental deficits, so he does not qualify for Special Olympics.
Now Alaniz talks about getting an offer from a university that has wheelchair sports. His dream would be Texas A&M.
But if not, he has a solid backup plan to pursue. A law degree. All that coming after, he said, a state title.
“I’m excited, I’m confident, I’m nervous,” said Alaniz, who recently competed at the Texas Regional Paralympic Games in San Antonio and brought home gold medals in the shot put, discus and javelin. “But I’m going in there with one goal, and that’s to win. I want to win this more than ever. Having won all my medals, it would be a total waste if I don’t win state. I’m anxious to get there and bring a state title to the Valley.
“I feel like what I’m doing right now is a stepping stone for athletes like me in the future.”