University of West Florida student hoping to make her mark at 2024 Paralympic Trials

ESCAMBIA COUNTY, Fla. ( WKRG ) — University of West Florida student Kira Stevens is hoping to make her mark in the 2024 Paralympic Trials, which start on Thursday in Miramar, Florida.

“It’s really been a journey that I’m really proud of,” Stevens said.

Stevens’s journey started when she was born prematurely during Hurricane Ivan, weighing 2 pounds and 3 ounces.

Her parents were told she wasn’t going to make it more than 24 hours and if she happened to make it, she would be severely limited in what she could do.

“She had a severe brain bleed with cysts, and we didn’t know what was going to happen at that point,” Kira’s mother, Mia Erickson Stevens, said. “We were just told she would never sit up, she’d be severely mentally retarded, she wouldn’t walk, ever feed herself. We knew we were going to have a big journey ahead of us.”

But her parents were determined to prove the doctors wrong.

“We worked really, really, really hard on everything. All of her flexibility all of her exercises that she did,” Stevens said.

Her parents were able to get her swimming and then walking. When she was 4 years old, she started competing nationwide in triathlons.

Now, she has her sights set on Paris, hoping to compete in the 100-meter and 200-meter track and field events.

“When I had casts on my feet when I was very, very little, my mother actually put Paris 2024 on them, so it would kind of be like fulfilling a prophecy,” Stevens said.

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