But 23 years later, the girl from Butte stands a hair under 4-foot-5.
Erin is a dwarf. She's also one of the world's best disabled athletes, and she's on her way to Beijing to prove it in the 2008 Paralympic Games.
They will join 4,000 physically disabled athletes from around the world, competing in 20 sports. The games are held in cooperation with the Olympic Games, often in the same cities and facilities.
These will be Erin's third Paralympics. She is no longer the upstart she was eight years ago in Sydney, Australia. She's not the emerging star of Athens in 2004. When Erin walks into the Bird's Nest stadium for the 2008 Opening Ceremonies, it will be as a leader of her team. A seasoned veteran.
A returning champion
Erin's parents, a physician and a teacher, moved the family from Chicago to Butte when she was 5.
“We realized there was a better place to raise our children,” said Barb Popovich, who retired from teaching at Butte Central High School, but still fills in as a substitute.
Erin had already been diagnosed with achondroplasia, a genetic disorder that is the most common cause of dwarfism. She wore braces to keep her back straight and to minimize bowing in her legs, and has undergone about a dozen surgeries.
Overall, though, her childhood wasn't much different than her older brother's (6-3) and sister's (5-10), Barb Popovich said.
A kid who wants a cookie jar off the top shelf will find a way to get it, and Erin was no different, her mother said.
“We didn't have to make a lot of accommodations for her,” Barb Popovich said. “We didn't want to treat her too much differently from her siblings.”
When school started each year, Erin and her mother would explain her condition to the other students.
“We would sit down and talk with the class and tell them why she was different, why she needed a stool to get to the drinking fountain,” Barb Popovich said. “Her classmates were very accepting.”
Erin loved sports from the time she could walk. She played soccer and basketball, rode horses. By junior high, though, she was at a serious competitive disadvantage.
“The other kids were all hitting their growth spurts growing inches and feet,” Erin said. “My big growth spurt was an inch. I decided some of those contact sports weren't for me.”
For most of her young life, Erin had a perforated ear drum and couldn't stay in the water for very long. That was fixed when she was 11, about the time she was giving up on a career in professional basketball.
Erin went to her parents with a question that would change her life.
“She said, ‘Mom, I would like to meet some new people. Can I join the swim club?' ” her mother said.
That was in January of 1998, when Erin was 12. By October, she was swimming competitively in New Zealand.
“It was quite a shock for her to advance so quickly,” her mother said.
In the 2000 Paralympic games, the 15-year-old girl won three gold medals, three silver medals and broke four world records.
Greek goddess
People sometimes confuse the Paralympics with the Special Olympics, for people with mental disabilities.
The two are not similar. The Paralympics are for athletes with physical disabilities, and they have to earn a spot on the team. Athletes are classified on a 1 to 10 scale according to their physical abilities. Erin, a seven, swims against athletes with amputated limbs or other disabilities.
Today's Paralympic athletes are as driven and competitive as Olympic hopefuls. They train hard in Erin's case, full time and don't get prizes for showing up.
“Ask any of the athletes on the Paralympic teams, and there's no doubt we're all aiming for that gold medal,” Erin said.
In 2004, she went to the Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece, with high hopes.
She exceeded them.
“Athens I don't think I can say enough about it,” Erin said. “Never in a million years did I imagine that would happen.”
Erin took home seven gold medals - one more than Michael Phelps had won in Athens a couple weeks earlier.
“That comparison was made fairly frequently back in 2004,” said Julie O'Neill, associate director for the Paralympics and the head swimming coach.
The performance brought Erin widespread attention. In 2005, she won a prestigious ESPY award for best female athlete with a disability.
The same year, Erin was named individual sportswoman of the year by the Women's Sports Foundation, joining the ranks of past winners like Annika Sorenstam, Michelle Kwan and Gail Devers.
“She is just the complete package as an athlete,” O'Neill said. “The talent, the dedication and the drive.”
Little girl, big world
Besides the Paralympic Games in Sydney and Athens, swimming has taken Erin to several countries, including South Africa, Argentina and Germany.
Last summer, the United States Olympic Committee sent her and five Olympic hopefuls to China for a goodwill tour in anticipation of this year's games.
“The people I get to meet are phenomenal,” she said. “Who would have thought when I was 5 or 10 years old that I would have friends all over the world?”
The success and resulting accolades have earned Erin a degree of fame.
“I've had several people come up to me and say they look up to me, which is always weird because you don't really think of yourself in that role,” she said.
In October, Olympic and Paralympic athletes are invited to the White House, where Erin will have the opportunity to meet the president and rub elbows with some of the country's most famous sports figures.
“I'm still amazed by her accomplishment,” Barb Popovich said. “She's an inspiration to me, but most of all she's my daughter.”
Beijing bound
When Erin began her freshman year at Colorado State University, she asked the coach of the swim team if she could participate in practices, swimming alongside able-bodied Division I college athletes.
“She and her mom came in, and I said ‘Let's give it a try,' ” said coach John Mattos. “We didn't know what to expect.
“Immediately, the athletes kind of took her under their wing, and she really blossomed,” he said.
Erin spent her entire college career training with the team, and was held to the same standards as the rest of the athletes.
This summer, Mattos worked one-on-one with Erin, preparing her for the upcoming games.
She spends about four hours a day in the pool or weight room, six days a week.
“Right now she is very well prepared,” Mattos said. “She has had a great year training-wise.”
Erin and her teammates were to spend 10 days training together in Japan before flying to Beijing in time for the opening ceremonies on Sept. 6.
She will compete in the Water Cube - the same pool where Michael Phelps just set a new Olympic record by winning eight gold medals.
Erin won't have the chance to match that record. Two relay races have been eliminated from this year's Paralympic Games, so Erin is only competing in six events.
“It's a big bummer, but there's nothing we can do about it,” she said. “I'm still going to try to be perfect.”
As always, the Popovich family will be there to cheer her on.
Closing ceremonies?
Erin graduated from CSU in May 2007, with a degree in health and exercise science, but continued to train with the university team.
She's going into the 2008 games as a full-time athlete, but that's unlikely to last. In the past couple years, several of her 20-something friends have retired from competitive sports to focus on careers.
Barb Popovich thinks her daughter may follow suit.
“That's the next exciting phase of her life, but she'll never give up swimming,” her mother said.
Erin hasn't decided yet if these will be her final Paralympic Games or what might come next. For now, she doesn't care.
“Right now the goal is just to get through Beijing,” she said.
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