Earlier this week, when the International Olympic Committee finally announced that this year’s Olympiad at Tokyo had been postponed until 2021, my thoughts immediately turned to Martha Reuther.

Ever since the Allegany native became involved in international paralympic swimming in 2008, her name has frequently appeared on the Times Herald sports pages.

Paralympics are competitions for impaired athletes and for Martha, it’s vision. She’s blind in her left eye with 20/400 sight in her right.

But that considerable issue hasn’t altered her life’s path.

Reuther swam at a high level for her high school team at Allegany-Limestone and continued at Brockport State, where she was a SUNYAC all-star as a senior.

However, from high school through college — she has a degree in psychology — Martha also stayed involved as a paralympic swimmer and has become one of the country’s best.

In 2016, the freestyle sprint specialist finished eighth in the 100-meter breaststroke at the Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

But her ultimate goal was to be part of the 2020 Games in Japan.

After graduation, Reuther served as a volunteer coach and coordinator of women’s recruiting at Brockport.

This past year, she took a position as graduate assistant coach at Malone University in Canton, Ohio, where she’s earning her Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling.

However, as with every other college in the country, Malone is now closed and she’s doing her classwork online back here at home.

“EVERYBODY’s going through a lot right now but I’m pretty good given the circumstances,” Martha said, noting that the Paralympic Swim Trials, set for June, were also postponed. “It was done in congruence with the Olympic Games.

“I expected it to happen, to be honest, because they canceled everything else. You just have to move forward and keep the plan you’ve set, adapt it, and understand that it happened for a reason, and a very important one, the health of the world.”

Reuther also sees a bit of an upside to the postponement.

“It gives more time to prepare and get everything ready mentally, physically and emotionally, so I don’t think it will hurt me,” said the U.S. Paralympic National Team member, who will have just turned 27 when the Games are contested in 2021. “Everybody’s main prerogative is to be safe and healthy … there’s no point in having an event that would endanger so many people’s lives.”

But right now Martha, who knows all about personal struggles having been born four months early at 1-pound, 8-ounces, faces a different one.

It appears this year’s trip to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs is on hold.

“I was scheduled to go out there twice this summer and depending how everything goes, it could still happen, we don’t know yet, (or) how travel will be,” she admitted. “At the moment, OTC is shut down … they’re not letting people in from the outside and they’ve shut down the pool and training facilities.

“Nobody can swim right now so we’re all in the same boat as far as maintaining training and physical fitness. To adjust, you have to learn to do stuff on land and figure it out.”

And that’s where she’s stuck right now.

“Growing up here, a lot of the coaches in the area know me and I would have a lot of access to facilities … Allegany, Olean and Portville all have pools, the ‘Y’ is also an option,” she said, though noting those options are currently closed.

“Running is what you would do to maintain cardiovascular fitness along with ab work. I also do stretch cords with two wristbands … hook it to a pole and do the strokes that I would do and that’s resistance as well as stroke-technique focus. I’m trying to maintain the level of fitness necessary to take (me) into next year.”

BUT WHAT about circumstances entirely disrupting her schedule?

“You plan a certain amount of things in advance and have a set plan for what you were going to do for the next couple of months,” Ruether allowed, “though there comes a point when you can be disappointed (but) you kind of have to shift your mindset … that disappointment isn’t going to help you to progress forward in order to achieve those goals. To maintain that level of mental toughness you have to adjust your thinking and refocus yourself.”

Martha has two more years as a graduate assistant at Malone to earn her Master’s tuition-free and will head back in the fall. But she’ll do so with plenty of optimism, no matter how long it takes for her to return to the pool.

“Last September, we had (the World Championships at London) and I got fourth (in the 50 free),” said Reuther who has now competed in three such international events. “That makes me feel pretty confident going into this next training cycle. It’s not like I’ve got the biggest uphill battle to climb because everybody’s in the same boat.”

(Chuck Pollock, a Times Herald senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@oleantimesherald.com)