An incredible journey from BV Southwest to, possibly, the 2021 Summer Paralympic Games
Yaseen El-Demerdash graduated from Blue Valley Southwest High School a couple of weeks ago, and by the time he secured his diploma, he already had national records in swimming, a world championship in a hobby and an academic scholarship awarded to just 150 kids in the nation.
But this story begins with something he couldn’t obtain because it might be what defines him best.
El-Demerdash just spent 18 months training to become a Paralympian. He was born with Poland’s syndrome, a rare disorder in which some bones or muscles are just plain missing.
He’d swam against able-bodied kids his whole life, logistically because that’s what’s been available but purposely because that’s how he’s always viewed himself. But two years ago, a coach informed him he could qualify for Team USA Paralympics swimming, and that sounded pretty cool.
His disorder tested within the range, and a month later, he was setting an American Paralympic record every week. He broke a breaststroke record nine times, so he spent the next 18 months training that stroke for the 2021 Tokyo Paralympics.
“He was on such a high,” his mom, Dina Massoud, said.
Team USA sent him off to get internationally classified, where El-Demerdash swam the breaststroke so well that his time would be ranked No. 1 in the world.
Would be.
On a panel of two, one judge determined El-Demerdash didn’t really swim like someone with a disability and banned him from competing in any race that used the breaststroke.
His father said he’d never seen him more disappointed. But this is why he shares that story so willingly. Within a couple of days, it was as though a switch flipped. Now banned from the race for which he’d trained a year and a half, he had a new goal.
“I’m gonna qualify in every single event possible,” he said.
You see, El-Demerdash has made a habit of learning he’s not really supposed to do something, only to find a way to do it anyway. He’ll still compete in the Paralympic Team Trials next week in Minneapolis, still hoping to making the Games in Tokyo, even if they’ve stripped away his best event.
Been that way in every aspect of life. At school, when he was told they didn’t have a robotics class, he not only helped persuade the district to allocate significant money to start one, he ended up teaching the class.
“Not just teaching the kids,” said Brandon Hawks, a sixth-year teacher at Blue Valley Southwest. “Teaching the adults.”
El-Demerdash did that while he took a college course ... during the same hour of the day. How? His teachers asked that aloud some days. They had conversations about how this 17-year-old kid not only made it work but excelled at it all.
He’s a 2021 Tokyo Paralympics hopeful and a six-time American record-holder. A robotics world champion. One of just 150 Coca-Cola Scholars in the nation. The co-founder of a non-profit designed to provide grants to stem programs.
And now this: Yaseen El-Demerdash, who is headed to KU in the fall to continue his athletic and academic career, is The Kansas City Star Boys Scholar-Athlete of the Year, alongside Girls Scholar-Athlete of the Year Kendra Wait of Gardner Edgerton.
A record-breaker
When El-Demerdash was born, the four fingers on his right hand were fused together like duck feet. His father can still remember the looks on the faces of the nurses in the room, who couldn’t explain the cause. The imaging hadn’t shown anything abnormal.
It was later that El-Demerdash would receive the Poland’s syndrome diagnosis, but they’d only know its severity as he grew.
There were some positive signs early. By six months, El-Demerdash was crawling. By nine months, he would pull himself up on tables to walk.
With one arm.
A cast covered the other. He had two surgeries — one at three months, the other at six months — to separate his fingers, each of which are also missing a joint. His right arm is smaller than the left, both in length and mass. He doesn’t have a right pectoral muscle, neither the pectoralis major or the pectoralis minor.
“I’ve never thought of myself as disabled,” El-Demerdash said. “Some things I just have to do a little differently.”
His parents, both of whose families hail from Egypt, stressed he could do whatever he wanted, and it’s one of the reasons they signed him up for sports. His mom was an athlete. El-Demerdash tried soccer, basketball, track.
At age 7, he got into swimming. He hated it at first, he’ll tell you. That makes where he is now all the better.
El-Demerdash has broken six American Paralympic records and still holds four of them — the 100-meter breaststroke, 200-meter breaststroke, 50-yard breaststroke and 200-yard breaststroke. (Team USA still honors his eligibility in the event, even though he failed to meet the qualifications internationally.)
He broke those records during his high school season, and he added six school records along the way. Before his senior year, he made it a goal to qualify in every state swimming event, and did it easily.
But, yes, he hated this in the beginning. As someone who prefers to see the progress of his work and understand its purpose, he found swimming confusing.
“I’m showing up, getting in the pool, and I’m swimming back and forth for an hour and a half only to end up in the same place I started,” he said. “That didn’t make a lot of sense to me.”
That’s how his mind has operated — with a desire to know not only the way things are but why and how they’re the way they are.
From student ... to teacher
Eventually, his parents had to stop buying him toys. Or at least expensive ones. El-Demerdash would just take them apart.
One afternoon, his father walked into the living room to see his laptop scattered across the floor in dozens of pieces.
A screw driver rested in the left hand of El-Demerdash, still of elementary-school age.
“His curiosity wasn’t just looking up information — it was using his hands to figure out how things worked,” said Aref El-Demerdash, Yaseen’s father. “With my laptop, he had to completely take it apart. It wasn’t something I was relying on, but it was still working. As you can imagine, it’s not like he took it out in a reasonable (manner) where you could just put it all back together.”
El-Demerdash started first grade a year early. He was so curious, so intent on asking every question that came to mind that his mom worried he would be a distraction to his classmates. Maybe some teachers wouldn’t understand him. Even when he was a baby, the Montessori school complained he never wanted to take a nap. Always wanted to be in action.
Robotics offered a perfect match.
In its too-simple description, robotics is a competition in which students design robots to complete tasks. It’s much more complicated than that. It requires the completion of strenuous, tedious tasks and mental challenges, and that suited El-Demerdash well.
He learned of it his freshman year and became immediately hooked. In just a couple of years, he was part of a club team that won the FIRST Tech Challenge World Championship in Houston in 2019.
Ahead of his junior year, he wanted to participate in robotics for the school. One problem: Blue Valley Southwest didn’t have a robotics class. It didn’t have a teacher who knew the concept, either.
El-Demerdash raised his hand — for both. With assistance from classmates, parents and support from teachers and his principal, El-Demerdash led the charge to launch a program.
He designed the curriculum for it. More than 20 kids enrolled this year,. He set up a group chat, and students texted him throughout the day, asking for advice on their robots.
“Essentially, I was his student,” said Hawks, who helped with the program its first year. Cody Parks, the school’s wrestling coach, has the baton now.
As a senior, El-Demerdash took seven classes. Five were Advanced Placement classes. The other two? He re-took engineering classes. Just for the fun of it.
You won’t be surprised to learn he plans major in mechanical engineering at KU. It won’t surprise you either that he actually plans to double-major. Hopes to get his MBA in four years, too. He wants to start his own business, one that revolves around — you guessed it — robotics.
“I like the idea of finding a way to make people’s lives easier,” he said.
He left his mark at Blue Valley Southwest.
As an athlete. As a student. As a teacher. As a mentor.
At the senior swimming banquet, a parent stood up and read a letter addressed to El-Demerdash. He’d called coach Carrie Miller ahead of time and requested to do it.
It was authored by the parent’s son, an essay of the impact El-Demerdash had on him.
The son feared he’d become too emotional while reading it.
“That’s the kind of influence he has on everyone around him,” Miller said. “He’s very hard-working and dedicated and all that stuff — but he’s been an even better teammate and classmate. And that’s what his teammates will remember about him here.”
They’re still swimming together for the time being. But El-Demerdash has his own personal trainer. He got a part-time job to pay for the sessions. In a week, he’ll head north for the Paralympic trials.
He’s been deemed too good for one event.
The route’s never been simple.
“When I do share his story, it’s not a kid whose life is always perfect,” his mother, Massoud, said. “His success has come from grinding, from hard work and even from disappointment — especially from disappointment.”
