Natasha Stasiuk prepares to depart Toronto on June 11 to compete with the Canadian contingent at the Special Olympics World Games taking place in Berlin from June 17 to 25.Eduardo Lima/The Globe and Mail
Natasha Stasiuk’s parents tried to put her in ballet when she was young, but she found it “too girly.” She played hockey and soccer and swam before she found her true love – golf.
“It is my happy place,” she says.
Stasiuk, 24, is a student at Humber College, and a member of Canada’s team at the Special Olympics World Games in Berlin. The event begins on Saturday and runs through June 25 with 7,000 athletes from 190 countries taking part.
She picked up golf when she was 8, took some private lessons and is pretty much a scratch golfer. Over the past five years she won two national championships and four provincial ones within Ontario for women with disabilities.
Some years ago Stasiuk was diagnosed with an intellectual disability but it was only in 2021 that she learned she had autism spectrum disorder.
“I always felt a little different,” she says. “I was not the best in group or social settings. It was very frustrating.”
She has sensory issues – she wears neither a golf glove nor sunglasses and is startled by loud noises – but has found her niche in golf. “It has given me confidence.”
Canada’s Special Olympics contingent of 89 has been in Germany since Monday. A pep rally was held at Seneca College last Sunday during which congratulatory video messages were played from Olympians past and present: Cheryl Bernard, Patrick Chan, Brad Gushue and Elizabeth Manley.
The group will compete in everything from basketball to bocce to powerlifting and rhythmic gymnastics to soccer and track and field.
“They are just as competitive as anyone else out there,” says Stephanie Labbé, the former Olympic soccer goaltender who is an honorary coach.
Labbé grew up with a cousin who had Down syndrome and reached out to Special Olympics Canada a half-dozen years ago.
“I saw the impact the organization had on people with intellectual disabilities,” she says. “For me it is the purity of emotion and joy in sports. At the elite level there is so much going on that you have fog in your brain and are distracted.
“Special Olympians bring me back to why I started to play sports to begin with. And that was because it is fun.”
There are as many amazing stories as there are athletes.
Phil Brown is 55 and tattooed and bounds around like a joyful puppy.
“Some people don’t want to stand out like a sore thumb,” he says. “I want to. I want to inspire and help people.”
Brown, 5-foot-6 and a wiry 138 pounds, began to lift weights as a teenager. He squats 300 pounds, bench presses 105 and dead lifts 400. He has won 187 medals over the past 30 years in Special Olympics and will be powerlifting in Berlin.
He is hyperactive and has an intellectual disability but works hard. He lives with a roommate and operates a handyman business in his hometown of New Minas, N.S.
Brown grew up in the foster-care system.
“I was beaten up and abused a few times,” he says. “I was passed around like a piece of luggage. I called people Mom and Dad so many times that I got kind of confused. It was horrible, but I like to go forward in life.”
He has won 11 national powerlifting championships. “We have special talents,” he says. “The word disability – I want to throw it out the door.”
Stasiuk was born in Russia and adopted from an orphanage outside Moscow when she was 12 months old. Her parents, Peter and Sandra, brought her to Oakville, Ont., which she still calls home.
The Stasiuks initially hoped to adopt a Canadian child but the wait was too long. They applied in Russia and were sent pictures and videos of babies at the orphanage.
They fell in love with Natasha as soon as they saw her.
When they travelled to Russia to get her, she was malnourished and underweight.
“I was skinny as a stick,” Natasha Stasiuk says.
On Monday she will play the first 18 of 72 holes at the Special Olympics World Games. Her dad serves as her caddy.
“I don’t talk much on the golf course,” Stasiuk says. Her dad interjects good-naturedly: “Except with me. She yells at me if she has a bad day.”
She suffered a broken ankle in March that left her left foot in a boot for six weeks. “I was doing something stupid,” she says, explaining that she fell during a snowstorm.
She is studying to become a developmental-service worker.
“I want to help people and feel I have a special understanding of what they go through,” Stasiuk says.
Then she reflects for a few seconds.
“One thing I would tell people is to not give up,” she says. “A lot of people in high school told me that golf wasn’t a sport.”