Building On Parapan Ams Success, Cali Prochaska Aims To Take The Next Step In 2024

When it comes to big international swim meets, it can be useful to get one’s feet wet as a teenager and then come back strong the next time around. Just ask Cali Prochaska.

Prochaska reached her first Parapan American Games four years ago in Lima, Peru. In that debut, she placed fourth in the 100-meter butterfly and fifth in the 100 breaststroke.

“So, I got to race both of them again this quad,” Prochaska said. “That was fun.”

Not to mention productive. Prochaska, a 21-year-old from Fort Wayne, Indiana, took the earlier experience and turned it into four medals at the Parapan American Games Santiago 2023 that took place in November in Santiago, Chile. She collected gold medals in the 100 butterfly S9 and 200 individual medley SM9, a silver medal in the 400 freestyle S9, and a bronze medal in the 100 breaststroke SM8.

“I feel like the first Games, we definitely had a lot more veterans, but I was also one of the newer people on the team,” she said. “Whereas this Games we had a lot more veterans go to the world championships, and we had a lot more of the newer athletes get to come to Pan Ams.”

The 2019 event in Lima taught Prochaska, who was born with proximal femoral focal disorder in her left leg and hip, how to pace herself at an important international meet.

“Any big meet like that, it’s seven days of racing. It’s long,” Prochaska said. “Your first international trip is always super exciting, so it’s easy to come into that and be super high energy. But you can’t really sustain that for a whole seven days because we saw some of the newer athletes do that this time around, too.

“I think having that first experience helped this one because you kind of know what to expect. You know what’s going to be in the (athletes’) village, what’s not. You know what to expect, really.”

Prochaska followed up Santiago by competing at December’s U.S. Para championships in Orlando, Florida, where she won a relay silver medal while trying to “get back into the swing of things" after her Santiago experience.

“(The times) were where we expected them to be but not anywhere near a best time or anything,” she said. “It’s just good to get some long-course racing in. Wasn’t really expecting big things out of that meet. It was just kind of to get back into the feel of racing.”

Prochaska said she was most pleased with her performance in the 100 freestyle, where she was sixth.

“Just because I haven’t done that one in a while,” she said. “It was pretty close to being right on my best time.”

Prochaska is a sophomore exercise science major and varsity swimmer at the University of Northern Iowa. Fellow U.S. Para national team swimmer Olivia Chambers is also a teammate at the University of Northern Iowa (UNI).

“My dad’s family is from Iowa, so it’s not too far away from home,” Prochaska said. “It’s been really good. The team was super supportive.”

The UNI women’s swim team took a 10-1 record into the holiday break. The Panthers will dip into their conference schedule during the second semester.

Prochaska must balance college swimming with trying to qualify for Paralympic Games Paris 2024. She narrowly missed making the U.S. team that went to the Tokyo Games in 2021.

“Long-term goal is obviously (Paris) this summer because we were just off from the last (Paralympic) squad,” she said. “What are we, six months out from trials? It’s getting closer.”

In fact, the U.S. Paralympic Team Trials for Swimming are set for June 27-29 in Minneapolis.

Prochaska said that she feels she’s on track to make her Paralympic debut.

“I feel like a lot of the work that we’ve put in is going to start to show here in the next few months,” she said. “We’ve got a lot of meets coming up in the next few months.

“Obviously, you know (Paralympic Games Los Angeles 2028) is coming up. We know it’s there, but I’m just taking it one quad at a time, just looking at this one for now.”