Five Countries, Three International Competitions and One Unforgettable Year For Catarina Guimaraes

Catarina Guimaraes was making the final preparations for her ultimate dream — competing in two track-and-field events at the Paralympic Games Paris 2024 — when she received an email. It was an invite for a U.S. women’s national CP soccer team camp in Ireland only a few weeks away.

Guimaraes, who has cerebral palsy, had a simple response.

“I was pretty candid with them,” Guimaraes said. “I told them, ‘I’m happy to, but I’m competing right now. So when do you need this information?’”

Thus sprang a whirlwind of experiences for the 20-year-old from Cranford, New Jersey.

First, in late August she headed to Paris, where she competed in the long jump, finishing eighth in the women’s T38 class, and participated in heats for the 100- and 400-meter. Then after a short return home, she took off for the soccer camp in Ireland.

Next up was a reward for competing in Paris: a trip to the White House for U.S. Paralympic and Olympic athletes. About a month later, she hopped on a plane again and traveled to Spain for the International Federation of CP Football World Cup, where she helped the U.S. finish in second place.

And all of that came after competing in the track world championships in Kobe, Japan, in May.

“I’ve been to five countries in one year, and four of them have been for athletic competitions,” Guimaraes said. “So (2024 has) been pretty amazing.”

While that is the organized chaos of a two-sport athlete who competes on the international stage, Guimaraes embraces everything about it. She says each sport helps the other. For instance, soccer takes care of the conditioning — “I have like the second-most meters per minute on the team” — and provides her with “a little bit of that grit in track.”

“It’s so easy in track to stop a couple seconds before the line or a couple of feet from the line,” Guimaraes said. “Or take a workout a little bit too lax. Having soccer kind of in the back of my mind helps me realize me not getting there or missing a ball means the other team scoring.”

Most of her training, though, comes in track. Some of that is because it takes a group of people to train for soccer. Guimaraes takes care of that latter problem by finding pickup games on Sundays as a soccer tournament approaches to make sure her skills are in prime condition.

At the World Cup in Spain, Guimaraes and the U.S. were hoping to repeat the performance from 2022 when the team won the inaugural championship and Guimaraes earned tournament MVP honors. She picked up where she left off from the previous World Cup by scoring twice in a tournament-opening 9-2 win over Ireland.

Guimaraes, however, missed the next two matches with turf toe. One of those was a 3-1 loss to Australia, the other a 16-0 victory over Denmark. She returned for the final group-stage game, a 12-0 triumph over Japan, which set up a rematch with Australia for the championship. Guimaraes recorded an assist on the second goal that gave the U.S. a 2-0 lead, but Australia scored five second-half goals to win 6-2.

“That was tough,” Guimaraes said. “I came away from Spain realizing that I’ve been to three major competitions this year and I haven’t won one of them. It was a very frustrating feeling. I have my own personal opinions about how it went. ... I think that there was a lot of things going against us and, unfortunately, we couldn’t come back from that. But I still think that me and the ladies, we did an excellent job. We fought with everything we had, all of us, put everything we had out there, and it just wasn’t the result that we went there for.”

Guimaraes, who is taking online classes at Keiser University after attending High Point University for two years, said it would be a difficult choice if she had to pick one sport over the other if a scheduling conflict occurred.

“I love both of them equally,” she said.

The decision would come down to which event she had a better shot at winning. In general, Guimaraes said she would tend to lean toward track because it is her against everyone else.

Of all the things she did in 2024, Paris was easily the highlight. Guimaraes took in many of the tourist sites that the French capital had to offer, though nothing can compare to competing at the Stade de France.

“There was a moment, it was during my 400, I was getting my blocks ready and it was the day after the long jump, so I was coming off of a pretty major loss and my body wasn’t feeling great,” she said. “I knew that at that point that I was there to experience it and being able to soak in that moment and a crowded stands of I believe 35,000, 40,000 people, all cheering was a very surreal experience and something I will never forget for the rest of my life.”

Steve Drumwright is a journalist based in Murrieta, California. He is a freelance contributor to usparatf.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.