Welcome Week is the focus of GCU Club Sports coaches and student-athletes all week long.
 
For Grand Canyon University Men's and Women's Water Polo Head Coach Tye Dutcher, there's one other major event on his radar.
 
For those that think that all of the Olympic pomp and circumstance left Paris, France for good two weeks ago, they're wrong, since the 2024 Games of the Paralympiad will take over the majestic city for ten days beginning this Wednesday. It gives athletes who've suffered some form of physical impairment the opportunity to compete at the highest levels of sport.
 
Dutcher knows full well what the highest level embodies. Eight years ago in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Dutcher was one of those elite athletes participating in the opening ceremonies of the Paralympics. Dutcher – who had lost his right leg at age 11 as a result of a horrific lawn mower accident – had overcome that loss and then some, excelling in swimming while at Auburn Riverside High School near Seattle, Washington. That prompted an article in the Seattle Times that ultimately paved Dutcher's road to Rio.
 
"One of the state paralympic coaches read it and reached out to my (ARHS) swim coach," said Dutcher. "I left Washington a week after my high school graduation for Colorado Springs and became a resident at the Olympic Training Center for a year. That year was probably the most growth I've experienced in my life by having elite athletes around me and good coaches to push me mentally and physically, and I qualified for the 2016 games."
 
Dutcher went to Rio ranked 10^th in the world, but still fully intended to medal in at least one of his three signature swimming events: the 100 backstroke, the 50 freestyle and the 4x100 individual medley. During the prelims of the 100 back (his best event), the 19-year-old Dutcher was neck-and-neck with the two highest-ranked swimmers at the halfway mark of the race. He wound up with his personal-best time, but floundered down the stretch and failed to advance to the final.
 
Eight years later, he's still not completely sure what happened.
 
"My body suddenly locked up in the last 50 meters. It felt like someone was literally pushing my shoulders down," said Dutcher. "It may have been God saying, 'You're not ready yet, and your heart isn't in the right place for this.'"
 
That may sound far-fetched to one who doesn't have the same, powerful faith that Dutcher has, but to know him is to sometimes be overcome by the amount of belief, faith and trust he rests in his Creator. It was that faith that he later realized was being tested at that moment in the water.
 
"I was pursuing the world of athletics, but deep down inside, I knew there was somewhere else I should be," said Dutcher. "Being a husband. Being a coach. Being a servant of God. Swimming was ultimately a selfish sport for me, and I knew that I should be a light for others instead of swimming for myself."
 
Just discussing that time of his life makes Dutcher reflective, almost melancholy. Watching him put the pieces of his life since then together in his mind, though, brings inspiration to the room, and a surprising clarity for him. He beams when he talks about his wife of five years, Emma, and his one-year-old boy. And his excitement about his new job in the private sector. And his zeal for entering Year #2 as part of GCU Water Polo and the university in general is palpable in his voice and his face.
 
It makes sense now, and it gets a little clearer each time he remembers his 2016 experience.
 
"There's still a small part of me who feels like I didn't do enough and left something on the table, but I see the larger scale," said Dutcher. "I want to be an instrument for the Lord, and I constantly ask Him for opportunities to do that. I talk to people all the time in my current job to hopefully shed light on the gospel, and I coach a GCU team that embodies that. I now have a way to speak to organizations about it as well."
 
It takes more than a moment for him to try to put himself back in the shoes of a 19-year-old Paralympian, and when asked what advice he'd provide to those ready for competition in Paris this week, Dutcher knows the interviewer expects a speech. Instead, Dutcher utters two lines that a sermon couldn't have summed up better.
 
"Remain humble. That's the only thought I have in my head about it."
 
(Click on the video below to find out more about Dutcher's courageous life story.)