Grand Canyon alum Jataya Taylor represents USA in fencing at Paris Paralympics

Jataya Taylor was left with a decision that no person should have to make: “Do I amputate my leg to make my life better?”

After suffering a training accident early on in her military career with the Marine Corps in 2005, tearing ligaments in her left leg and severely dislocating her left shoulder, Taylor was struggling in her recovery. It took a toll on her mental health.

At the time, doctors did not know that Taylor had Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS), which prohibits her leg ligaments from recovering.

“I finally said cut my leg off,” Taylor said. “In 2017, I ended up with an amputation of my left leg through the knee.

That’s when I finally started to be able to focus, going to school and then doing sports.

I had gone through so many years of — it wasn’t necessarily pain — but it was the inability to walk without hurting myself, the instability from the injury, wearing braces that didn’t work.

“Some of my providers realized that keeping the leg was causing more problems than it was worth,” she said. “I like to describe it as a bad relationship. Once you realize it’s a bad relationship, when you get out, you’re like, ‘Ah. That breath of fresh air.

That weight is lifted off of you.’ And that’s exactly how this felt. I wasn’t living life. So when I got the wheelchair, it was like, ‘I can live my life again.’”

She went back to school, enrolling in Grand Canyon University’s online program in 2021 as she pursued a master’s degree in public health. She got back into sports, finding her way to fencing at the Denver Veteran Affairs

Where a therapy program was started at the Denver Fencing Center in Colorado.

And, just two years after she started fencing, Taylor is now representing Team USA at the 2024 Paris Paralympics in the foil and epee events. The day she left for Paris was the second anniversary of when Taylor first began her career in the sport.