Lora Webster Carries Winning Attitude Through Life

Lora Webster is days away from flying to Paris to compete in her sixth Summer Paralympic Games, and she hasn’t packed a thing.

Instead, the senior member of the U.S. women’s sitting volleyball team has been busy getting the house cleaned, stocking the fridge, and ensuring her four children — Madi, 13; Cole, 11; Kyle, 9; and Cassidy, 2 — have everything they need during her absence. “I have a lot of guilt about leaving,” Webster says. “I want to make sure that everything is as smooth as possible.”

Webster and her husband of nearly 14 years, Paul Bargellini, are equal partners when it comes to their children, but that isn’t enough to dissolve the “mom guilt” she experiences when it comes to her athletic career. “When I’m not playing volleyball, I’m a stay-at-home mom,” Webster says. “I’m the one who does all this stuff, and I feel like I’m never off the job.” Webster stays in frequent contact with her family when she’s away, and she’s eternally grateful for her husband’s never-ending support. “My husband always says, ‘If you’ve got to go, win.’ So that is my focus. Winning is my job when I’m away.”

Indeed, winning — or at least maintaining a winning attitude — has been woven into the fabric of Webster’s life for as long as she can remember, along with positivity and optimism.

Those are qualities that others have observed in her as well.

“Lora’s positivity and joyfulness are palpable,” says Loreen Entenmann, a neighbor and acquaintance of Webster’s. “I have observed, in particular, how she parents her four young children with patience, encouragement, humor, and reinforcing gratitude. To me, that is even more amazing than her athletic achievements.”

Webster’s enduring hopefulness in the face of hardship, combined with her devotion to her family, are just two of the reasons she’s been named Amazing Mom of the Month for October. 

A winning outlook

Webster started playing sports at a young age. In sixth grade, she was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer, in her left tibia. Treatment involved chemotherapy and rotationplasty, a surgical procedure that removes the knee, part of the femur, and the upper tibia. The remaining part of the leg is then rotated 180 degrees and attached to the femur at the thigh. The foot, now facing the opposite direction, enables the ankle joint to function as a knee joint when used in conjunction with a prosthesis.

After surgery, Webster learned how to work with her prosthesis and was back to playing sports within months. She left soccer — her sport before the cancer — and took up volleyball. “I fit right in, and I was able to keep up with my teammates,” she says. Webster played all through high school, on varsity and club teams.

Webster credits her family — mom Sandy, dad Dale, and older sister Lisa, who played volleyball collegiately — for fostering her can-do attitude. “There was a ‘no-quit’ mentality in our household. My mom’s positivity is ingrained in me, and it set the mood for our house,” she says. “It was ‘Let’s do it, let’s make it through,’ and that was my attitude — it still is.

“You have choices in life. Getting cancer wasn’t a choice, but what you do with it is.”

The road to Paralympic gold

When Webster was 16, a coach asked if she’d be interested in playing sitting volleyball. (The U.S. was in the process of forming a new women’s national team.) At first, she declined. “I didn’t feel disabled, and I played standing volleyball,” Webster says. Ultimately, the coach convinced her to visit the Colorado Springs Olympic & Paralympic Training Center. “I had never done adaptive sports. I never hung out with other amputees,” Webster says. “Walking into that gym, seeing athletes whose prosthetics were all lying around…I’d never seen anything like that before.” Webster participated in the camp, and soon, she was hooked.

The team was still developing, but, Webster says, “I fell in love with what the sport could be.” She gave up standing volleyball and turned her attention to mastering her new discipline. She also fell in love with the community of athletes that was entirely new to her. “It was life altering,” she says. “We had a shared experience, and it was like an instant family.”

Webster went on to make the inaugural U.S. Paralympic Team in 2004 and has competed in every Games since, earning three gold medals — the most recent one coming earlier this month in Paris — two silvers, and a bronze. She hopes to make the team for the 2028 Summer Paralympic Games in Los Angeles to wrap up her career. “I would love to go out at home on U.S. soil,” she says. “That would be a really awesome end to what will be a 25-year career.”

Back on the home court  

When she’s not on the road, Webster’s focus is 100 percent on her family. When asked how she makes time for self-care, she laughs. “I really don’t,” she says. “But I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. My time away is when I’m traveling. It’s 3 1/2 days when I go away for training — that is my refresher.”

Webster says she loves being a mom and endeavors to raise her kids with the same positive mindset she had as a child. But she acknowledges it’s not always easy. “Not everything is always good, and that’s OK,” she says. “But you can choose how you react to something, and my husband and I try to model that for [our kids].”