Angela Duckworth says that “Grit is passion and persever-
ance for a very long-term goal. Grit is having stamina. Grit is stick-
ing with your future, day in day out, not just for the week, not just
for the month but for years and working really hard to make that
future a reality.”^31
The truth is that lots of very talented people don’t end up
doing the things they need to be successful and that talent alone
isn’t related to grit. She suggests that talent counts once and effort
counts twice for success. According to Duckworth “Grit is about
having what some researchers call an ‘ultimate concern,’ a goal you
care about so much that it organizes and gives meaning to almost
everything you do. And grit is holding steadfast to that goal. Even
when you fall down. Even when you screw up. Even when progress
toward that goal is halting or slow.”^32 If you want to know how you
score on Duckworth’s grit scale, take a look on her website or go to
Appendix 4.
Katherine’s ultimate concern is her quest to flip and glide. “I
used to kneeboard,” she explained. “I also had a big skateboard that
I would ride on my knees.” But since Katherine had mobility con-
cerns she needed special equipment to get to the next level. Then
she met Mike Box who manufactures wheelchairs, but not just any
wheelchairs. The chairs need to withstand the scuffs, spills, and
stunts of their riders. Wheelchair motocross, also known as WCMX,
requires a rugged chair and even more so a rugged constitution.
Katherine got her WCMX chair in 2012 and the very next week she
was at a skate park in Santa Monica dropping into bowls and never
looked back.
Her favorite trick to do in WCMX is the back flip. In fact,
she’s the first woman to ever do a backflip in WCMX. Katherine
described the first time she ever did this. “All of a sudden you’re in
the air just pulling your chair back and getting it back underneath
you. To me there’s nothing like that feeling of seeing the ceiling and
all of a sudden seeing the floor again, but this time it’s underneath
you.” And she loves the challenge despite how much effort it took.
“I got this idea that I wanted to do a back flip, but I really
wanted to be the first girl to do it, so just being able to set my mind
to that and accomplishing the backflipping, being the first one to
pull that off, was a huge thing and that’s always something that
stands out for me. Yeah. It took me years just to get up to the point
where I was ready to try it, and the thing about a back flip is you
could just go out and try a back flip if you wanted, if you’re crazy,81 / Sports and Adventure in High Sensation-SeekingDownloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSF Library, on 11 Nov 2019 at 14:19:03, subject to the Cambridge