CUMMING -- A running joke with the Paralympic Team USA swimmers is that their medals – a hefty number – from the Rio games are worth just a little bit more than the Olympic medals. The Braille on the back adds just a little bit more gold or silver or bronze.

The beads inside each – 28 in each gold, 20 in each silver, 16 in each bronze – that make each level sound different so the visually impaired athletes can tell which kind they’re holding adds just a little bit more weight.

McKenzie Coan was not shy in letting the kids hold them or shake them or wear them. She’s seen most of them grow up in her time with the Cumming Waves, the swim team at the Cumming Aquatic Center.

“You want to wear it?” she asked, smile as wide as her face. “It’s heavy. There ya go, man.”

Some of them who gathered Thursday afternoon at the center on Pilgrim Mill Road to welcome her and her four Paralympic medals – three gold and one silver – back to the family have grown taller than her since she last saw them.

At 4-foot-3, the 20-year-old Loyola University Maryland is used to people being taller than her.

Coan, a former Cumming Waves swimmer, competed in the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and brought back swag – three gold medals in the 100m freestyle, 400m freestyle and 50m freestyle and a silver in the 4x100m freestyle relay.

During a press conference filled with kids and local swimmers, Coan answered questions like how did she win, and how much does she practice, and what does she eat to prepare for a race.

“Lots of hard work. And lots of swimming,” she said. “And I’ve also had lots of support, too. This wasn’t just me.”

Being born with osteogenesis imperfecta has made her life different, sometimes hard, many times painful, but it has not stopped her from achieving what most can only dream of – becoming an Olympian.

A two-time Paralympian, at that, having competed in her first Games in London in 2012.

The genetic disorder, commonly referred to as brittle bone disease, causes Coan’s bones to break easily, sometimes with little or no apparent cause. It has made for a painful and unsteady life on solid ground, but in the water, she is home.

“The water is where I’ve always just felt safe,” she said.

As a child, her brothers were on the swim team while she was in aquatic therapy. When she saw how much fun they were having, she wanted to join the swim team, too.

The Cumming Waves, too, is home.

“We say this is a family,” said her mother, Teresa Coan. It’s our swim family.”

The young swimmer said one of the best parts of this whirlwind has been giving back to the kids, seeing their faces when they get to hold a medal, showing them that hard work can pay off, that achieving your dreams is possible no matter what.

“That’s,” she said, “is what it’s all about.”