Susan Katz will not only play in the Paralympics that follow the Summer
Games, but she could produce the television coverage of the events to boot.
The Silver Spring woman, who is associate producer of the ESPN nightly talk show Around the Horn, was named last week to the U.S. Paralympic women's wheelchair basketball team.
Katz was one of 12 women and five alternates selected from a field of 38 players at the Women's National Tournament at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania, March 3-7.
"I had a really successful 2003 season, and it was probably 80-20 in my mind that I was going to make the team. I was planning for it," she said. "But as it came to the moment, I was thinking, `Oh my God, what if I don't make it?' "
The 25-year-old athlete is a graduate of Quince Orchard High in Gaithersburg and a 2000 graduate of the University of Illinois, where she played on the women's wheelchair basketball team.
She got involved in track and field events at age 11 while living in Northern California and competed in discus, javelin and shot put at the 1996 Paralympic Games in Athens.
The daughter of two University of Maryland graduates said making the basketball team "is totally different. In 1996, I was 17 and didn't fully grasp what the Paralympics were. My only goal was to make the team."
This time, she's a member of a squad, "and I think it will be even better having them around me. ... We work so well together on and off the court."
Eight women's teams and 12 men's teams will participate in the Paralympics basketball tournaments from Sept. 18 to 27.
The U.S. men took the bronze medal at the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney. The women did not medal.
The Silver Spring woman, who is associate producer of the ESPN nightly talk show Around the Horn, was named last week to the U.S. Paralympic women's wheelchair basketball team.
Katz was one of 12 women and five alternates selected from a field of 38 players at the Women's National Tournament at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania, March 3-7.
"I had a really successful 2003 season, and it was probably 80-20 in my mind that I was going to make the team. I was planning for it," she said. "But as it came to the moment, I was thinking, `Oh my God, what if I don't make it?' "
The 25-year-old athlete is a graduate of Quince Orchard High in Gaithersburg and a 2000 graduate of the University of Illinois, where she played on the women's wheelchair basketball team.
She got involved in track and field events at age 11 while living in Northern California and competed in discus, javelin and shot put at the 1996 Paralympic Games in Athens.
The daughter of two University of Maryland graduates said making the basketball team "is totally different. In 1996, I was 17 and didn't fully grasp what the Paralympics were. My only goal was to make the team."
This time, she's a member of a squad, "and I think it will be even better having them around me. ... We work so well together on and off the court."
Eight women's teams and 12 men's teams will participate in the Paralympics basketball tournaments from Sept. 18 to 27.
The U.S. men took the bronze medal at the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney. The women did not medal.
