25 February 2026

Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympics: Team USA

In the lead up to the beginning of wheelchair curling at Milano Cortina 2026, we will take a look at all the National Paralympic Committees (NPCs) competing. Next is Team USA.

Team USA will be represented by two wheelchair curling teams: Team Thums (mixed team) and Team Dwyer/Emt (mixed doubles).

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If you had to sum up Laura Dwyer in one word, it would be pride.

When she mentions her incredibly supportive husband Chris, it comes with a smile. She not only mentions her two sons; but also their respective careers in the Marines and college football. She speaks about her curling career with a real sense of accomplishment, stunned by her own success in a short period of time.

But being a wife, mother and athlete could be attributed to most curlers. One of the things that brings her so much joy is her vegetable garden.

From farm roots to new beginnings

Dwyer has been one with the soil since she was one of seven siblings on a Wisconsin farm. She was then a landscaper for 18 years before an accident left her paralysed below the waist in 2012. Returning to her roots, she found solace in her garden.

While she does not have the space to grow the 300 tomato plants that her mother once did on the farm, she produces a lot of her own food from staples like tomatoes, onions, coriander and jalapenos, to ‘atypical’ choices like okra and peanuts. She even cans her own pickles.

“But I’m a fanatic about beets,” said an enthusiastic Dwyer.

“The deer come for my beet tops all the time, but I still plant them and lots of flowers because I landscaped everyone’s yards.

“So, I tend to still put some flowers in there mostly for deterring the deer and the rabbits, but it doesn’t really work.”

But growing her own five-a-day could only itch the scratch so much. Post-accident, the former university volleyball player, like many before her, became less active once in a wheelchair. Despite trying a plethora of Para sports, none stuck with her and instead she kept to the gym. There, she saw a flyer for a free adaptive curling clinic.

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Meet the teams

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Discovering curling and a new community

On her first day on the ice, she and the other new curlers met the national coach and Paralympians. She was encouraged to continue through her local club, and did so throughout January 2020. Her club, new to wheelchair curling, adapted alongside her, providing that much-needed community that she had been missing.

But the pandemic would disrupt further development. Despite this, she impressed at some national camps and, as a result, was the first reserve back home, ready to join the United States team if any athlete had to withdraw due to COVID-19.

“I was the girl at home testing for COVID every day for the two weeks leading up to, in case one of them could not travel,” she said, noting she had made the national team just months before.

“So, to be on the list at all for accreditation to go to Beijing was scary, let’s say.

“Would I have gone? Absolutely. Need be, I would step up and go.

“Fast forward four years later to where we are now, now I’m confident. Now I know I’m ready to go, and my timing is right.”

Stepping onto the Paralympic stage

And she will be a part of history: as her and veteran Stephen Emt will compete in the first mixed doubles tournament at the Paralympic Winter Games. It will also be her second trip to Italy, 27 years on from backpacking as a post-graduate.

It has been a rapid ascent to get here. She met Emt at a training camp in Phoenix, Arizona, unbeknownst to her that she was on the sheet beside the national team.

“I just figured it out three days in when they put me in [the team],” Dwyer said.

“And I was just like fangirling about it.”

Now, Emt is a close friend and a great mentor to her. She praises their shared values, having elite athlete mentalities and their ability to be comfortable with each other; adding they can “say what we’re feeling” and stressing “we need to be able to communicate in all the right ways”.

“He’s played over 100 games in world championships,” said Dwyer.

“He is the person in the USA wheelchair curling team that’s been around the longest.

“So playing alongside him, he knows what he’s doing, and I’m excited to be the person to take him to this next level, the debut of mixed doubles in the Paralympics.”

Their first World Wheelchair Mixed Doubles Curling Championship as a duo saw them narrowly miss the play-offs by a fine margin in 2025. They lost to Group A victors Norway in their opening game, but crucially defeated China in their penultimate draw. In a winner-takes-all clash, Dwyer and Emt conceded two in the last end, giving Aki Ogawa and Yoji Nakajima the win for Japan.

As a result, Japan would qualify on their head-to-head record and would go on to win the gold medal. The Americans would miss the quarter-finals by three centimetres in the end, edged out by Slovakia in the third-placed positions via the Draw Shot Challenge. But things have changed a lot in the space of a year.

“I have shifted my mindset quite a bit,” said Dwyer.

“When I went this last time to Scotland for the world championship, I was pretending that I was a big shot.

“I didn’t even allow myself to own and appreciate how far I’d come and recognise that this was really a big deal, that I had this opportunity.

“I didn’t take in, I didn’t allow myself to feel gracious. I was so hard-focused on this goal that I lost sight of the bigger picture.

“And moving from that, I had a terrible game against Japan. I was overthinking, I was analysing everything. I wasn’t allowing my natural ability to throw the stone to happen.

“Fast forward, it’s a whole other year later and having gone through all these games that I’ve gone through, recognising that, and then just letting my ability that I’ve trained so hard to get to this place, letting that shine through.”

Dwyer is someone that radiates confidence, but with sincerity to match. She has no interest in playing down her accomplishments, but cannot believe how quickly they have come. She is not afraid of calling out her own flaws in her game. She even distances from calling herself a Paralympian because “it felt weird, because I haven’t gone yet”.

Coming home to what grounds her

It reverts to her literal and figurative grounding. She sees this opportunity as more than just glory, but an opportunity to inspire her sons, who have watched her curling games in the stands after years of her cheering for them from the sidelines.

“It was so cool to feel that reciprocal love,” she said.

“This is my way of showing up for me as a mom of two boys, as a woman that sustained an injury, as a wife who’s worked through hardships.

“Hey, listen, I’ve been given this opportunity, what a privilege to be able to show up and show what it looks like to work towards a goal. And guess what? I’m going.

“I imagine that it will impact people far and wide, like my friends and family that know me here, but as well as other people who can hear my story, that I’m just a regular landscaping farmer girl that grew up, had some kids, had an accident, didn’t let it stop her.

“I turned back to sport, because why not? And here I am, gone to the Paralympics. It just feels like magic.”

Yet, we return to why it all matters.

Losing landscaping left a void and curling has helped to fulfil that physical need she got from hours in a yard.

“And can I still do things on my chair? Sure. Is it the same? Not even close,” Dwyer said.

“This has given back my passion towards something and that fills my heart and I know my husband loves me and can see that it really does good things for me.”

And her husband Chris has always understood the importance of her happiness. Formerly a tree trimmer, he used his talents to bring her back to the soil. He created raised beds for her vegetable garden so she could “reach the tomatoes up top” and they created a patio to allow his wife to access them.

“To have access to things that you do in a wheelchair that you used to do when you were able — that was something that I enjoyed so much,” she added.

“I feel so blessed that my husband made those for me.”

While results are important to Dwyer and Emt, there is plenty to be grateful for when she returns home. When the noise of Cortina is gone and whether they return home with a medal or not, the plants still need tended to.

Sometimes the little things mean more than you could ever imagine.

“It allows me to go to a place that fills my heart and soul, to work in the dirt and get really dirty and plant and touch the earth and ground with nature and do all the things in a different way, but I’m still able to do it,” said Dwyer.

“So I’m counting my blessings on my garden, for real.”

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Team USA stats

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