Jon Rydberg is a world-class wheelchair tennis player, and a reminder of a horrible accident 26 years ago.

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Jon Rydberg is a world-class wheelchair tennis player, and a reminder of a horrible accident 26 years ago.

BY SEAN JENSEN

Pioneer Press


Danea Nilsson recognizes her best behavior is required later this month in Athens, Greece.

On Sept. 19, she will proudly watch her son, Jon Rydberg, compete for a gold medal at his first Paralympics.

A native of Pine City, Minn., 60 miles north of St. Paul, Nilsson has watched her son, who lives in Oakdale, develop from a scrappy junior varsity tennis player who used a tennis racket welded to a crutch into one of the world's finest wheelchair tennis players. That rapid ascension often defuses her sensibilities, prompting her to endure evil looks and an occasional "Shut up!" from other spectators.

"Tennis is a hard sport for me because I'm a hollerer," Danea Nilsson says. "I get excited and then I realize, 'Oh, yeah, I have to be quiet.' "

Nilsson, though, likes to brag about her second-ol
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