Believe to Achieve: Stephanie Millard MBE

As part of #LPGirlsCan Week 2023 students were treated to a powerful, inspirational guest speaker in Collect on Thursday 15^th June.

Stephanie Millward MBE is a paralympic swimmer and Gold medal winning multi-Olympian. In addition to her moving whole school talk, Stephanie delivered a more intimate Q&A session with our Advanced Performance Programme (APP) students and our Sports scholars. Stephanie brought in her Olympic medals, Olympic torch, her newly published book and shared these precious objects with the students. Students were fascinated by the huge torch and by the paralympic Bronze, Silver and Gold medals each rattle and make a different sound so that blind athletes can identify what they are holding easily.

Stephanie was previously a successful non-disabled swimmer who featured on the British international team before being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when she was just 17 years old. This devastating news caused her withdrawal from swimming, and from life as she knew it, and she suffered misery and depression for eight years before being persuaded back into the pool in order to coach a friend. Her journey back to swimming success resulted in her selection for the GB Paralympic Swim Team and she went on to compete in Beijing in 2008 reaching three finals, London in 2012 taking one Bronze and four Silvers and winning two Gold medals at the Rio Paralympics in Brazil in 2016. In recognition of her achievements, she was awarded a MBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours in 2019 and is now an Ambassador for the Multiple Sclerosis Society.

The APP group and Sports Scholars were able to ask plenty of questions as they chatted to Stephanie in Main Hall. Her principal message that ‘if you believe it, you can achieve it’ came across clearly and given her experiences, very poignantly. Stephanie came from a place where “I couldn’t trust any part of my body”, where she felt a total failure both physically and emotionally, to achieving Gold at the Olympics – a lifelong ambition fulfilled. Her three key reminders to students were that they should never give up, to follow their dreams and to challenge themselves to make a difference in the world. Advice that will guide well all of those who heard it.

Demi (Year 8) found the most inspiration aspect of the talk the fact that Stephanie “didn’t give up and kept going to achieve her dreams.” Ava (Year 9) enthused “Stephanie’s talk was really inspiring; it really gave you lots of motivation to follow your dreams.” Anna Burns (Year 10) added “She had a nice story and it was really interesting; everyone should aspire to maybe be like Stephanie one day.”