As the Paralympics come to a close, one Doane alum comes back to America with a silver piece of hardware. Natalie Schneider competed on the Women’s Wheelchair Basketball Team in the 2024 Paris Paralympics and returns to the United States as a silver medalist. She is a five-time Paralympian and four-time medalist, winning two golds, a bronze and now a silver medal.
Schneider is a Crete native who played for Crete High School. She developed bone cancer in her sophomore year of high school that resulted in a surgery that replaced half of her femur and her knee joint with a titanium prosthesis. Schneider can walk but is advised not to run or jump anymore. Schneider maintained her competitive spirit and picked up wheelchair basketball, and this Paralympics has been maybe her most memorable.
“Seeing the Paralympic movement get so big has just been incredible. Now not just my family but my whole community back home is sending messages of support and watching the games. It’s just incredible. It puts a little bit of pressure on you but it makes you so excited to play because you are representing so many people and making so many people proud,” Schneider said.
With this being Schneider’s last games she’s competing in, she wants to soak it all in, and she wants to continue the basketball legacy maintained by both men and women across both the Olympics and Paralympics.
“Paris has been really incredible. They have managed to pack the stadiums with 20,000 people. It’s so loud you can’t even hear the bench. This is unlike any environment we have ever been in. Seeing the Eiffel Tower all lit up, just the way they have brought the whole city together. Our games have been sold out. We have family members struggling to get tickets,” Schneider said.
These have been both the most spectated, most competitive and most watched Paralympic games in history, and Schneider leaves Paris with a silver medal and role in helping expand the sport of wheelchair basketball to far more people around the world. While she didn’t get the gold she wanted, Schneider helped USA basketball secure five total medals across both the Olympics and Paralympics. She retires as a five-time Paralympian and four-time medalist.
