“This is what dreams are made of,” Steve Serio said moments after his historic “threepeat” gold medal victory at the 2024 Paris Paralympics, where he notched a triple-double. However, the medals were just add-on accolades; Serio was really in it “for the love of the game.”
After being born with a benign spinal tumor that crushed his spinal cord, Serio became completely paralyzed in his lower extremities. Despite this, Serio never saw disability as a negative. At age 15, Serio’s life completely changed and expanded, as he shared that he began “focusing on the things that I could do and not focusing on the things that I couldn’t.”
It was at that time that Serio met the coach who introduced his family to the world of adaptive sports. “I remember going on a practice and sitting in a wheelchair for the very first time and it was a basketball wheelchair that was like ten times the size of me,” Serio jokingly recalled. “But I remember pushing up and down the court and going through practice and turning to my father to tell him this was the first time in my life that I feel like I don’t have a disability. This is the first time that the rules didn’t have to be changed so that I could participate.”
Five Paralympics and four medals later, the 2024 flag bearer for Team USA is now dedicated to the impact he can have off the court: empowering people to find their athletic outlets regardless of their mobility needs or differences. One example of this that Serio is most proud of is his work with the Challenged Athletes Foundation as a member of Team Toyota. He is working to remove barriers related to adaptive sports by providing disabled athletes with the equipment they need to achieve their “impossible,” and help them “shatter any limitations others try to place on them.”
“I always remind athletes that the goal for paraathletes isn’t only to be the best versions of themselves as athletes, but to be the voice of people who feel like society doesn’t see them,” he said.
To Serio, “different never means less than.” It’s not about having special treatment, but rather having equal opportunities for all. Reflecting on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Serio said: “The ADA is an incredibly important piece of legislation…But what that legislation doesn’t tell us are the stories about why that is important. I’m who I am today because of the ADA.”
Read all 35 stories of the New York-based leaders profiled in our ADA 35 edition.