Linden Williamson is competing in this weekend’s Texas Parasport Games in San Antonio.
SAN ANTONIO — San Antonio is seeing the return of a passionate and fervent tradition this weekend.
And no, we’re not talking about Fiesta.
As partiers crack open cascarones around town, athletes will gather at Heroes Stadium, the Morgan’s Sports complete and the Morgan’s Multi-Assistance Center to compete in the 2025 Texas Parasport Games. Some of them are frequent competitors to the games, which are held every year in San Antonio as part of the Hartford Adaptive Sports Competition Series. And some of them are relatively new to the competition.
In that latter cohort is Linden Williamson, a 23-year-old San Antonio native who had tested the waters of wheelchair racing for just three months when she participated in her first Texas Parasport Games in 2023.
“I first realized, ‘Wow, I can keep up with some of these girls who have been doing this sport for 10 years,'” Williamson said. “That really encouraged me to keep going.”
Fast-forward two years, and Williamson’s hobby has turned into a talent she continues to hone. She won the 2023 Houston Marathon, just came in 36th overall in the Boston Marathon and is preparing to race in San Antonio on Saturday, where she looks to wrap up qualifying for the USA Track & Field Para National Championships. If she performs well, this weekend could mark a step to a bigger stage: The Paralympics.
Some people in her hometown saw this coming. Namely, Event Director Wendy Gumbert, who remembers being impressed by Williamson in 2023.
“She’s a pretty amazing athlete,” Gumbert said. “We discovered her about two years ago. Her coach and I just looked at her and said, ‘Oh my God, she’s gonna be really good.’”
‘It’s all about balance’
Williamson was 16 years old when motor neurone disease (MND) started to impact her. The rare ailment affects the nerves that help one’s brain and spinal cord communicate with the muscles.
Williamson’s MND eventually progressed to her losing use of her legs, but she has since stabilized.
“A couple years went by where sports was not my priority. Health was my priority,” she said. “But two years ago, I had the epiphany that I’m stable, I’m sedentary, and I really wanna get strong and challenge my body.”
At the same time as she’s entering the elite ranks of wheelchair racing, however, Williamson also works to help youth recovering from their own traumas. She’s a neuroscience researcher at UT Health San Antonio, where through neuroimaging – the process of creating images to examine the brain’s systems – she examines how and when teenagers undergoing PTSD therapy reach breakthroughs.
“For me, my personal experience as a teenager, going through a lot of years trying to find the right diagnosis, there were times where it was very rough,” she said. “Now, doing this research that is helping kiddos who are going through it, is very satisfying to me personally.”
The passion for her UTHSA research and wheelchair racing is intertwined, which means long days leading up to events like the Texas Parasport Games.
A wake-up time of 5:30 or 6 a.m. for an early-morning training session. Heading to work for her 8-to-5 shift. Then, a second workout of the day—either swimming, strength training or handcycling.
By the time she returns home around 8 p.m., she’s had a packed routine.
“But it feels like a privilege,” Williamson adds. “It’s all about balance. Ultimately, at the end of the day, I find time for everything because I really love it.”
A gift for a competitor
The 2025 Texas Parasport Games run through Sunday, and are free for spectators to attend. Roughly 300 athletes registered this year, which is three times as many as those who competed in the first games in 2011.
This being Military City, Gumbert says about half of them are military members.
Among the events in this year’s games are track and field, tennis, rowing, power lifting, archery, air gun and swimming. A full schedule can be found here.
But things kicked off Friday afternoon at the Morgan’s MAC facility, where snowboarder and Paralympian Keith Gabel instilled some motivation and helped surprise three athletes with custom-fit sports equipment—which event organizers say can cost up to 15 times as much as standard equipment for nondisabled athletes.
One of those three athletes: Williamson, who was gifted a high-end racing wheelchair to help her sprint even faster to her dreams. She’ll be competing in a variety of distances this weekend, including the 400 meter, 1,500 meter and 5,000 meter.
If she keeps up her trajectory, it might not be long before her new equipment meets the road at grander stages.
“I recognize that if I’ve come this far in two years,” Williamson says, “how much further can I go in the next two years?”