9-Year-Old With No Legs Practices Taekwondo, Wins Medals, and Hopes to Compete in Paralympics

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“She doesn’t see herself as being different,” mom Sharon Catt told the BBC about her 9-year-old daughter Maisie, who is a double amputee. Maisie is also a fierce taekwondo competitor. “She’s just Maisie who puts her legs on in the morning.”

After a severe bout of meningitis at just 5 months of age, Maisie, who lives near Huddersfield in the North of England, had to have her both of her legs amputated at 10 months due to septicemia. Not having ever known what it’s like to walk on her own two feet has never slowed Maisie down. “Whatever she wants to do, if she sets her mind to it, she'll do it,” Sharon says. “There’s no stopping Maisie.”

That resolve and drive has taken Maisie from being curious about taekwondo to getting to show her moves off in front of the World Taekwondo president as well as the president of the International Olympic Committee.

For Maisie’s parents, watching their daughter go through the ordeal of amputation at such a young age was devastating. “I just wanted to swap places with her,” Sharon told the BBC. “No one wants to see their child go through what Maisie went through.”

This inspiring young girl has learned how to use her prosthetic legs to full advantage and does many of the physical activities that other kids her age do. In addition to swimming, she is also a member of Girl Scouts. As her mom told The Examiner, “She is determined and fiercely independent. She doesn’t understand why other people like her haven’t done things like her.”

Maisie’s willingness to take on any activity led her to taekwondo. When she saw her younger brother Finlay, who is 6 years old, take up the Korean martial art at Premier Taekwondo in Huddersfield, she was naturally curious. While mom Sharon wasn’t sure at first if it would work out, she was proud to tell The Examiner that her daughter was “welcomed in and is the first disabled person to take part at the club,” much to their surprise.

For Premier Taekwondo Master Mostafa Bagherzadeh, when the office staff informed him that Maisie wanted to enroll, he “didn’t know what to answer,” as he told the BBC. But as he saw the hard work, determination, and dedication of this surprising girl, he was impressed. “Maisie is a credit to herself and to her parents,” he told the Examiner. “She is really proactive and is loving taekwondo.”

Quickly progressing through the beginning stages, Maisie is now a seasoned competitor having won medals in local and regional competitions as well as having made the selection for the 2018 British National Taekwondo Para-Poomsae squad. This meant she was able to compete in the World Taekwondo Championships in Manchester.

It just so happened that when she was there as part of Team Great Britain, she had a chance meeting with World Taekwondo President Choue Chung-won. While her dad, Jonathan Catt, filmed, she showed the president her best form. The video was retweeted by Meningitis Now, the United Kingdom’s main charity dedicated to fighting the disease that took Maisie’s legs.

Meanwhile, Maisie keeps plugging away, competing and winning in para-swimming competitions as well as working on her taekwondo skills, which she hopes might one day take her to the Paralympics. Her mom, who was with her when she met the international sporting dignitaries in Manchester, hopes that her daughter’s story will be an inspiration to many.