Shea Foster took a deep breath, thinking about the weight of the question before answering.
How much has adversity shaped his life?
He smiled, revealing a mindset opposite of most.
“Adversity is something that gives you the opportunity to overcome it,” Foster told The Post.
That sentiment wasn’t always so easy to carry.
Foster, 27, is set to compete at the 2024 Paris Paralympics for Team USA in the T-38 men’s 1500-meter race, which he set the American record for this summer. He recently starred on Netflix’s “Surviving Paradise” reality television series, and experienced newfound celebrity.
But at one point, it appeared unlikely he’d ever even be able to walk again.
In June 2021, just before he was set to report to Oklahoma State, where he had committed as a graduate transfer on the cross country team, Foster – driving his 2012 white Jeep in Louisiana – was struck by an out-of-control 18-wheeler.
The crash left Foster in a coma for 48 hours, temporarily paralyzed from the waist down for two weeks. He had a fractured spine, and needed 50 staples on both sides of his body after 360-degree spinal fusion surgery. Surgeons inserted screws and rods to mend the broken pieces of his spine back together. Foster also needed knee surgery.
At first, doctors told him it would be a “miracle” if he walked again, let alone run competitively.
He needed his family – particularly his grandma and aunt – to do almost everything for him, including bathe him.
“I would describe the pain as, it’s demoralizing,” Foster said. “It’s taking away your gift, or at least the gift that you think you had, that the population or other runners or other people that made you different or made you special. It really made me realize that my identity is not in running, but it’s in controlling what you can control. But it was very demoralizing.”
Foster, who ran at Lamar and Southeastern Louisiana before committing to Oklahoma State, had his entire life upended.
“Everybody thinks the first thing is, ‘Oh, you just won’t be able to run again,’ but mentally it really gets to you and it affects the silliest of things,” he said. “The way you react to people, the way you type an email, the way you go to the grocery store, what music you listen to – it changes the whole dynamic.”
But Foster, who grew up in Houston, set out to beat his doctors’ predictions.
Adversity was something Foster had long become accustomed to.
The only boy with four sisters, Foster’s adopted father committed suicide when he was in fifth grade. And he had been in a different crash previously, injuring his knees and back in 2019 while he was at SLU.
Hardship was nothing new. It had molded who Foster was.
“It was always, ‘that’s not possible, you can’t do that.’ I had to do everything by myself and learn by experience at a very young age,” Foster said. “I think my sisters always looked up to me to figure things out as well. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but I think always showing up every day and being there for them just in that moment really translated to athletically, academically and it created a monster of never giving up.
“It started showing me that you can become who you want to become and you can create the path. I know I don’t have extra resources or anything. And it just started making me realize, if you want something, go get it. It’s just been a constant trend of adversity after adversity.”
He challenged the lack of data on 24-year-old athletes’ recoveries from spinal fusions and stressed that he could return to running.
Just a few weeks after surgery, he could walk a mile. Two months after surgery, Foster was running long distances. After an MRI showed his spine intact and his bones fused together, his doctors, stunned, cleared him to race again.
By November, Foster was running for Oklahoma State. He earned All-American honors, finishing 27th at the 2021 NCAA cross country nationals.
“It changed my perspective on life to a different degree,” Foster said. “If someone starts complaining, they’ll be like ‘Oh my gosh, I just spilled on myself,’ and I’ll be like ‘Imagine if you had no food.’ It’s crazy, but I do this a lot now with everything. ‘Oh my phone is dead.’ ‘Oh, I’ll go get you a charger, that’s great, we can charge it up. Imagine if you didn’t have a phone.’”
Foster still carried disappointment, however.
Despite his miraculous return, it had become clear he would not qualify for the Olympic team.
The Paralympics had reached out to him, but he didn’t have much interest. He had dreamed of the Olympics, and it was “defeating” when reality hit.
Then, again, Foster’s perspective changed.
“Basically, I couldn’t swallow my pride and my ego,” Foster said. “I think what really lit a fire under my butt was my younger sister has spina bifida and she’s in a wheelchair, she’s in eighth grade, going to be a freshman in high school this coming fall. She wears a diaper, she has a shunt on her head. Right when I got done with surgery, the first thing she said to me was ‘we have matching scars now. We’re the same.’
“She was like ‘I can’t play any sports, I can’t do anything,’ and I was like ‘Yes you can.’ It’s hard to say it from a distance but I think she really made me realize that I need to swallow my pride because this is not just about me and accomplishing goals that I want, but also giving that little ounce of thought or inspiration or hope for other people that may have not recovered the same way.”
So now Foster enters the Paralympics as a favorite to medal in the T-38 men’s 1500-meter race. The T-38 group is for athletes whose movement and coordination are affected at a low degree in the lower trunk and legs.
It comes amid unexpected television fame. “Surviving Paradise” — where contestants attempt to go from the wilderness to a luxury villa for a $100K prize — spent time on Netflix’s top ten in America this year, and Foster has begun getting noticed in public.
“It was always something I wanted to do, but it was never the right time,” Foster said. “It was just so random, but the timing was so perfect – it was in the summer, it was my last year of school, there weren’t a bunch of roadblocks, it just made sense. I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into and I didn’t know if I was gonna like it or not like it, but I did ask myself ‘Shea, if you don’t do this, will you regret it?’ And the answer was yes. I’m glad I went. It was an incredible experience.”
Paralympics, reality TV and inspiring others.
Foster is just getting started.
“Looking back on it, the story’s not done yet,” he said.
