Noelle Lambert knows that in order to thrive in an athletic environment, you need to hit the ground running. She manages to do that in spite of only having one leg and continues to overcome the odds everyday. The former Division I lacrosse player had lost most of her left leg in a freak moped accident in 2016. Afterwards, the courageous young athlete underwent many months of physical training and received a running blade, a leg prosthetic designed for athletes, at the end of her sophomore year through the Challenged Athletes Foundation. By her junior year, she was back on the lacrosse field learning how to run and play all over again.

While playing the sport she loves remained her focus, playing with a disability broadened the young athlete’s focus. She created a charity, The Born to Run Foundation, which donates prosthetics to other young athletes in need of a limb. She graduated from her college, UMass-Lowell, in May 2019 and decided to take up a sport she had never tried before, sprinting. She traveled to Tempe, Arizona to compete in her first para-athletic track meet, the Desert Challenge Games. She ended up winning her class and beating the top U.S. female in the same class. In August 2019, at the World Para Athletics Grand Prix meet in Paris, she qualified for the U.S. National Team by running the 100-meter race in 16.85 seconds. She is now a member of the U.S. Paralympic team and is currently training for the 2021 Paralympics in Tokyo in the 100-meter race in Track and Field.