West Orange High adaptive track athlete shows Warrior spirit | Observer Preps

The question seemed harmless enough.

At that time, Isabella “Bella” Matos was an eighth-grader at Falcon’s Cove Middle School in Weston, when a teacher asked a group of assembled students who among them would be headed to high school in the fall.

But when Matos raised her hand, the teacher — Joseph Monks — spotted her and sprinted over.

“He sees me and runs up to me and asks, ‘Do you do any sports?’ and I was like, ‘No — obviously I don’t do any sports,’” Matos recalled. “‘What can I do?’”

Today, Matos, 16, is a junior at West Orange High. She also has cerebral palsy and moves about campus in a wheelchair. Matos doesn’t suffer from the cognitive disabilities that sometimes accompany cerebral palsy, but she cannot use her legs, and her spine forms a permanent arch. 

She soon learned Monks was recruiting her to join the track-and-field team at Cypress Bay High in Weston — where she went to school as a freshman and sophomore — as part of the adaptive track-and-field program the FHSAA offers for students with permanent physical disabilities.

Before that moment, Matos had never considered the possibility of being an athlete. And although she was intrigued, she recalls dismissing the idea at first.

“I didn’t really think much of it, because I didn’t think a girl in a wheelchair doing track made sense,” Matos said. “It sounded pretty ironic to me.”

When she mentioned it to her parents, though, they felt differently. 

Kathy and Manny Matos knew their daughter could be timid and saw competition as way to get her outside of her comfort zone. When a close friend joined in the lobbying, Matos decided to give it a try. 

That decision came about halfway through the spring semester of her freshman year in 2016 at Cypress Bay. Matos jumped right into competition mid-season, around the time of the county meet.

It was the experience of that first meet — of wearing the track uniform with her school’s logo on it and having people in the stands cheer her on — that left an indelible mark on the newfound athlete.

“I remember after my first meet, I just started crying like a baby, because I was so just overwhelmed with happiness,” Matos said. “These hundreds of people cheering on the kids — somehow they all knew my name. It was something I didn’t really think would happen.”

BUILDING CONFIDENCE

Matos competed for Cypress Bay as a freshman and sophomore in all three events offered through the adaptive track program: the shot put, the 200-meter race and the 800-meter race.

She said the shot put was the toughest to learn, but even that event has grown on her. Her favorite event is the 200-meter race. A sprint by comparison to the significantly longer 800-meter race, Matos said she likes the mental challenge of pushing herself to go as fast as she can for what is usually just over one minute’s time.

She also enjoys the upper-body strength she has developed from her training, but Matos is most profoundly appreciative of what competing in adaptive track has done for her self-confidence.

“I actually feel a lot more confident and a lot more comfortable in my own skin,” Matos said. “I know that if I can go to state, wear a helmet, and race around a track in front of thousands of people, then I can do regular things with just a few people looking at me. I get to appreciate myself more now than I did before.”

Matos has embraced competition and athletics — and she also decided winning isn’t too bad, either. 

The first adaptive-track athlete in Broward County, she has earned a total of 16 FHSAA gold medals in the past two years. 

WARRIOR RETURNS

Now that a new job for her father has brought her, her parents and her brother Gian, 9, back to Winter Garden — her hometown — she will be looking to add some more medals to her résumé, this time for the West Orange Warriors.

And if her brother’s soccer team has its way, she’ll be doing so in a specialty racing wheelchair designed for competition. 

It was after one of Gian Matos’ soccer practices that his team informed Bella it had started a GoFundMe to raise the $3,500 necessary for a racing wheelchair. Previously, Bella has competed in the standard chair she uses for everyday life.

Once again, Matos recalled being overwhelmed by the support.

“I didn’t know what to say,” Matos said. “I swear I blacked out for a few seconds, because I was so in shock.”

Once track season begins, Matos saids she will train daily, much the same as her other teammates. She is motivated to continually improve and beat her old times and distances, and she has begun to research which colleges and universities offer adaptive track-and-field programs.

Whatever the future may hold, this West Orange Warrior is motivated to be an inspiration for herself and others.

“I do it to prove that you can do stuff no matter what you have going on,” Matos said.