Caleb Mead Leaves Behind Legacy of Courage at WDHS

Caleb Mead wasn’t the star of the West Deptford High School swim team.

He didn’t set a new school record in the 50 free. He didn’t come home laden with trophies from the state championships.

What Mead did do was inspire his teammates through his perseverance, his love of the sport and his dedication.

Diagnosed with autism at a young age, Mead had found joy in sports, trying baseball, soccer and basketball, but being in the water paled by comparison.

“Swimming’s the best,” .

Though it seemed like a long shot, with the recommendation of school psychologist Kathleen Pilarz and the go-ahead from former swim coach Pete Kelly, the district opened the door to Mead when he got to high school, giving Mead the chance to go for the one thing he really wanted:

A varsity letter.

Four years later, not only did Mead have that varsity letter, he was standing in front of a room of more than 200 people standing and applauding as he received the high school’s annual Marty Gray Award, given to the most courageous athlete.

Standing there, giant trophy in hand, was a moment Mead and his parents—William Mead and Rachel Ledden-Albadine—won’t soon forget.

“It’s a beautiful message,” Ledden-Albadine said. “To say I’m proud of him doesn’t even encompass the word.”

And as both parents said, it goes beyond just Caleb’s success—from the coaches who accepted him without question and got him into meets whenever possible, to his teammates, who gathered around the block and cheered for him as he churned through the anchor leg of a freestyle relay, to the teachers, aides and advocates who pulled for him, it was a community effort.

“They were just fantastic for him,” William Mead said. “All the kids there were always encouraging.”

They were more than just encouraging, though, making sure he was OK in the noisy, difficult atmosphere of meets and simply taking his differences in stride, something that always impressed Ledden-Albadine.

That sense of openness and inclusion, a willingness to give anyone a shot, is something she said wouldn’t be possible everywhere.

“I don’t think the parents realize what they have instilled in their children,” she said. “It’s really a whole community that did this—they made this possible for Caleb.”

When he first came to the RiverWinds pool as a freshman, Caleb had to not only adjust to being part of a team, he had to figure out high school competition, and he did so the same way his fellow swimmers would—by setting goals and working to them. His were a bit different, though—like learning how to dive in off the blocks.

“He kept bellyflopping, coming up red as a beet,” William Mead said.

But Caleb was persistent; he figured out the blocks and kept pushing himself to get better as a swimmer, day in and day out.

Juliet Lancaster-Avila, who took over from Kelly as swim coach, said even in the tough moments, the frustrating days, Caleb kept at it.

“Every day, he was at practice, just like everyone else,” she said. “Caleb has overcome so many of the challenges associated with his disorder that he has become an inspiration.”

And he kept at swimming, despite shifting between West Deptford High School, another program at Clearview Regional High School and finally a third program at Bankbridge Regional School. The simple experience of getting to swim all four years of high school was its own reward, his mother said.

“I don’t know that he cares about that varsity letter,” Ledden-Albadine said. “He cares that he had a great time swimming.”

Caleb has gone on to start to compete in the Special Olympics, where he’s more than proved himself already. After a handful of wins in his first few meets, he took on the best among his peers at the state competition recently, coming away with a gold, silver and bronze in his three events—the freestyle, backstroke and relay.

Unlike his high school meets, where the vagaries of lap times were lost on him, Caleb has been able to take his new competition as one-on-one, and has already developed some friendly rivalries in the pool.

“He loves and understands the thrill of direct competition,” Lancaster-Avila said.

It all crystallized in that first meet, when his father told Caleb, who often had to swim from behind in high school meets, to just get out in front of everyone else.

“Oh, I can do that,” he told his dad.

Fifty meters later, he’d scored his first victory, and that taste has the teen going for more.

“He gets competition and he likes to win,” William Mead said.

And as Caleb heads out from West Deptford into the next chapter of his life, William Mead can look back at his own athletic career at the high school—he was a football player and track athlete—and draw parallels to what his son did in those four years.

But there's one difference.

“I wasn’t a champion like my son,” William Mead said.