Grace Anne Braxton, reveals her secret identity as a top-ranked female Special Olympian gold medalist.
By Ester Salguero
Taken by Alex Sakes
In 2007, Grace Anne Braxton stood among 7,500 athletes from 160 countries at the Tianma Country Club Golf Course in Shanghai, China. It was there and then that she won gold for the championship in women’s golf. It wasn’t her first win. She had also been to Athens, Greece for the World Summer Games and won another gold medal in 2011. Braxton fell in the love with the golf course in Athens. and now she holds the title as one of the top-ranked Special Olympics female golfers of the world.
Golf isn’t the only sport that she excels in at the World Summer Games, in 1991 she won a gold medal in swimming. At home, she has a closet full of over 700 medals. They have collected from years of competing in the Special Olympics World Summer Games starting from 1991, right out of high school.
For Braxton, her prowess as an athlete is unknown to many of the people she sees day to day. As a server at Qdoba on the campus of Mary Washington, most people are used to seeing her shuffling from table to table, stopping to talk to students or give them napkins or eating utensils. Many would describe her as humble and sweet. She just loves talking to students and meeting new people.
Many students don’t know exactly how many accomplishments Braxton has made in playing golf. What makes her so admirable is how hard she works given so few rewards. For an athlete like Braxton, there’s not much chance of sponsorships or brand deals. She really doesn’t even tell many people about her accomplishments, unless they ask.
But that’s what makes her more impressive. In a world that is goal-oriented, and more focused on the wins than the work, she is an example of someone who works simply because she enjoys it.
Here at UMW Braxton says she loves the people she works with and she gets excited to meet new students all the time. “I like where I am at [and] I like who I am.”
Harrison Braxton, her dad, has been right by her side through the years. Before he retired in 2006, her dad was a as a judge on the fifteenth Judicial Circuit Court in Virginia. Her dad was her very first coach but now, she also has Carl Koons, a professional coach from the Fredericksburg Country Club, who has stuck with her from the beginning. Born in Fredericksburg in 1971, Braxton has remained a local resident for 45 years.
Ever since she was 8 years-old, Braxton, has been a hard worker. She started as an athlete with track and field. “I started when I was 8 years old because I have an intellectual disability,” she said softly. Her father was a judge in the fifteenth Judicial Circuit court in Virginia, and he acted as her first coach. She credits him for molding her into the strong woman that she considers herself to be now.
She graduated from James Monroe High School in 1990. All the while, she continued her sports training. She began entering competitions in 1991. She was encouraged by her dad and although training was also more intense, she kept at it because Braxton finds motivation in building herself up, like her father taught her to.
She handles her busy schedule well and likes to keep moving. She is always doing something, whether it be going through different seasons of training for golf and swimming or going to different sports games on campus.
Other than training, winning and working at UMW, Braxton spends her time playing solitaire or completing word search puzzles while she watches other sports like college football or baseball. She has had three different jobs over the course of her life. She has worked at the Central Rappahannock Regional Library, the hospital and where she is now, UMW which she says she wouldn’t trade for anything.
She still plays golf and swims regularly. Now, she spends her time making a point to never miss a UMW basketball game, ever since 2014 when Taylor Johnson, now an alumnus of Mary Washington, asked her to come watch them play back when you could find her working at the Eagle’s Nest two years past. She has been working at the University of Mary Washington for 24 years and has built long-lasting relationships with members on the basketball team.
Usually, she would buy her own season tickets to the basketball games but this season the UMW team pulled their money together to buy the tickets for her.
“I’m a big fan of the UMW basketball team and I love them, I love to be around watching these guys play sports,” Braxton said, sitting across from me, fidgeting with her visor before her shift at work.
“Every time we see her she gets so excited and it kinda just makes us excited,” said Brent Mahoney, one of the few seniors left on the basketball team. “She’s a day brightener.”
Shaw talked to me about how important Braxton is to the team. “Grace is extremely important, as I said before, she just has that great spirit,” he said. “I call her Amazing Grace, that pretty much speaks for itself.” Anytime he sees her, his spirits are lifted and they talk about basketball or “which Jamba Juice tastes best.”
“It was good to see that someone paid attention and cared and just to know that she went out of her way to see how good we were doing,” Shaw said.
Even as she continues to train and strive for more, Braxton is content with her life. “I just love it here, I don’t want to change it for anything,” she said, fixing her visor. “I like to work with kids, students, meet new students [and] learn about their lives.”
Taken by Alex Sakes
All the guys on the basketball team agree that Grace is their number one fan. At the first game of the season Eric Shaw, a junior on the basketball team, took time to jump across the seats lined up on the side of the court to give Grace a fist bump before going into the locker-room with the team. In her seat, she tells the players to “man up” and encourages them to play the best game they can, giving them the support that her dad gives her on the golf course.
He and Grace have their own handshake that they do whenever they see each other, a sign of the special bond they have together. At the game, anytime Mahoney would make a shot she would yell out “Yea! Mahoney” and turn to the person next to her to say a little something special about him. Mahoney says that he wants to try to get Grace to play a few games with him on the golf course.
Filmed by: Izzy Briones
Edited by: Ester Salguero
Song: Cover by Arcade Fire- Song on the Beach