Massachusetts teen takes home the Sports N Spokes Junior Athlete of the Year award
It’s still dark outside when Mary MacDonald, 17, rolls out of bed, gets dressed and heads out the door before most of her classmates have hit snooze once. Four mornings a week, she trains at Taunton High School’s track in Taunton, Mass., since her own school, Bristol Plymouth Regional Technical High School in Taunton, doesn’t have one of its own.
That early discipline, along with her athletic accomplishments, leadership and community involvement, just earned her a national honor. Sports N Spokes has named MacDonald its 2026 Junior Athlete of the Year, marking the 40th year the magazine has given out the award. She was presented the award July 12, 2026 at The Hartford Nationals in Grand Rapids, Mich., conducted by Move United.
MacDonald competes in wheelchair racing, seated throws, para powerlifting and para triathlon, and has won a handful of events at the Tri-State Games in New Jersey and the Hartford Nationals in Michigan across multiple disciplines in back-to-back years. She owns a personal best of 36 minutes and 58 seconds in the 10K, set this year at the B.A.A. 10K in Boston, and a personal best of 17 minutes and 37 seconds in the 5K, set at the Unified 5K in Lancaster. Among her other notable results: a 54:36 finish at the 2025 Falmouth Road Race, a 41:15 at this year’s hilly Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta and an 18:17 at the Cedartown 5K.
“I love just going fast,” MacDonald says. “It’s so freeing, you know? That’s why it’s so close to my heart, the freedom that you feel when you’re on a track.”
Her path started in 2020, when she was struggling with her weight and severe depression. She began in eighth grade racing 100-meter sprints in a basketball chair, before meeting Katrina Gerhard, a 2019 Los Angeles marathon women’s wheelchair division winner who introduced her to her first true racing chair.
“At first, I did it just to lose weight and to feel a little bit better,” MacDonald says. “And then, you know, runner’s bug. So, I ended up just loving it in general.”
She has since broken barriers as the first female athlete to win multiple para events in her circuit, in a sport where she estimates only about a quarter of competitors are women.
MacDonald’s ambitions extend beyond racing. Her Girl Scout Gold Award project grew out of a moment at a doctor’s office, when she realized there was no accessible scale for a wheelchair user like herself. She’s now working to bring seated scales to more clinics in her area.
Asked what she’d tell a kid newly diagnosed with a disability who feels an athletic dream slipping out of reach, MacDonald pointed to finding a personal reason to show up, what she calls a “why.”
“Once you find your drive and what makes you move, you’ll be able to just continue to be the best you can be,” she says. “It doesn’t matter what disability you have; you can do it.”
When she learned she’d won, MacDonald said she was left speechless.
“I feel like one of the luckiest kids in the world,” she says.
The mornings, though, start the same way they always have. The alarm goes off at 4 a.m., and MacDonald gets up anyway.
Along with the title, her award includes $2,500 cash prize, a custom-made trophy, a Sports N Spokes swag bag and a feature story and cover appearance in the magazine’s September issue.
Be sure to catch Mary’s full-feature article in the September Sports N Spokes issue. Subscribe today.