Former Gamecock competed in Olympics. Now she’s singing on ‘America’s Got Talent’
Even Olympic athletes get nervous sometimes.
When Shevon Nieto stepped on the “America’s Got Talent” stage a couple of months ago, she couldn’t shake the feeling. Singing isn’t quite like running the 400-meter hurdles. You can hit every note and nail every lyric, but what if the audience just doesn’t like the song? What if they aren’t entertained? Staring down notoriously critical judge Simon Cowell is a little different from staring down a finish line.
But as fans of the NBC television show saw on Tuesday night’s episode, Nieto didn’t let nerves hold her back from delivering a powerful performance. She knew, in that moment, that she was singing for something bigger, that she was showing the world what her and her husband had overcome, that she was singing for the man behind the stage in the wheelchair.
The song was her own original creation, called “Through The Good & The Bad.” In it, Nieto sings, “It ain’t easy to have what we have, through the good and the bad.”
Those words come from direct experience.
Jamie Nieto and Shevon Nieto, formerly known as Shevon Stoddart, are two dreamers and high-achievers. Both competed in the Olympic Games — twice.
Born in Jamaica and raised in New York, Shevon went to South Carolina on a track scholarship from 2002-05. She ran on the 2002 women’s team that won the NCAA Outdoor Championship — the first team NCAA championship in USC history. Two years later, as a junior, she ran the 400-meter hurdles for the Jamaican team in the Athens Olympics, and she competed again in the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Jamie, meanwhile, was a celebrated high jumper who competed in Athens in 2004 and in the 2012 Olympics in London.
On April 22, 2016, the couples’ dreams and goals came to a halt.
While coaching student-athletes at Azusa Pacific in California, Jamie attempted a back flip — something he’s done hundreds of times — but slipped on the turf and landed on his neck and head. When Shevon went to visit her future husband in the hospital, doctors informed her that her then-boyfriend was paralyzed from the chest down and that he might not walk again.
At that time, Shevon was a couple of months away from competing in the 2016 Olympics in Rio, likely the last Olympics of her career. When she saw Jamie laying in the hospital bed, unable to move, she retired as an athlete.
“Jamie wanted me to go to the 2016 Olympics,” Shevon told The State. “He didn’t want to be a burden to me. He didn’t want to hold me back from my dreams. He did feel that way. I said, ‘No, I’m not gonna leave his side.’ And to me that felt like, being there by his side, that was my gold medal. That was something that to me is worth so much.”
From the moment Jamie received his prognosis, Shevon was nothing but encouraging, telling Jamie that he would walk again, that it wasn’t going to be easy, but he would get there.
Jamie approached his rehabilitation like he once approached his Olympic training.
“We’re athletes,” Shevon said, “so you know we’ve got a clock on everything and measuring everything.”
With plans on marrying Shevon, Jamie set a goal that he would build up his strength enough to walk her down the aisle. Together, he and Shevon determined that he would need to walk about 150 steps. For months he rehabbed. In the beginning, two or three steps would send him tumbling. But week by week, he added more and more steps.
A few weeks before their July 22, 2017 wedding, Jamie reached 150 steps. He remembers telling Shevon how happy he was to get there and her telling him, in true Olympic athlete fashion, “Well, all right. Now do 200.”
“So I went back to it, and I had about a month left, and I ended up doing 206 steps,” said Jamie, who is still building up strength but is able to ambulate with the help of a walker.
“It was amazing, and to be there at the wedding and to see her sing down the aisle, I couldn’t even look at her because I would’ve broken down. I might’ve fell with tears in my eyes. It was such a special, beautiful moment.”
Through The Good And Bad
The songs started filling Shevon’s head seven or eight months after Jamie’s accident.
She always loved to sing. When she was 8 years old, she’d listen to Whitney Houston and Toni Braxton and dream of being like them. Shevon wrote her first song when she was 9. Even while she ran track in high school in New York and collegiately at South Carolina, she’d find time to take vocal lessons, write songs and sing at churches and events. She’d sing on bus rides home from track meets and after every championship. Her teammates on the Jamaican Olympic team used to teasingly ask her, “Why are you still running and not singing?” And she’d respond that she loved to run and that she was waiting for the right time to begin her music career.
Interest in the arts was one of the commonalities that attracted Shevon and Jamie to each other. Despite competing in many of the same track and field meets, the duo didn’t meet each other until they both auditioned for the same commercial in 2010. Jamie was pursuing acting and writing in the time before his accident. Shevon was still training for the Olympics, but music and acting were in the back of her mind.
When Jamie got hurt, all of it fell to the wayside. Shevon wondered if her musical dreams would ever come to fruition.
Then, Jamie started getting better. He started regaining some movement, wiggling his fingers. And Shevon found herself singing again. Songs would come to her. She would be driving down the road with Jamie in the passenger seat and suddenly song titles would flash through her mind, songs about resilience and strength, songs that she would sing to Jamie and help inspire him through his rehabilitation.
“They’re all songs like ‘Fight,’ ‘I’m Strong Enough,’ ‘It Wasn’t Easy,’” Shevon said. “They all had titles like that, and it was just everything that we were going through, it was just pouring out through me, through song.
“... During this time, the music was a way that helped us through and made us happy. And that was when Jamie said, ‘Shevon, you should record your music.’ He was getting stronger, and I said OK.”
Three years after Jamie’s accident, Shevon released a music video for “Through The Good & The Bad,” with sales for the song going toward Shevon’s Helping Others Triumph Foundation, which provides support for people with spinal injuries, strokes and other disabilities.
“America’s Got Talent” producers discovered the music video in January and reached out to Shevon about auditioning for the show’s 15th season — an email that she never saw coming. The audition was a resounding success, as all four judges voted to send Shevon through to the next round. Afterward, Shevon told host Terry Crews that her and Jamie were expecting their first child.
“Standing on stage in front of those judges, and especially to sing that song, it was just more than a song for me,” Shevon said. “It was a life experience. And I had the opportunity to share it with the world. And that just meant a lot to me, and I’m really thankful for all of the replies and things that I’m hearing from people and how the song has touched them and how our story can encourage other people.”
The song certainly encouraged Jamie, who said he will do anything to support his wife through her music career, just as she has supported him throughout his recovery.
And she’s not the only one thriving. Jamie has found success in his own right through his acting and writing. He’s a writer for two sitcoms on the Bounce Network, called “Family Time” and “In The Cut.” And he landed an acting role in an upcoming Netflix science-fiction show called “Away” that will star Hillary Swank.
While that show is months away from premiering, television viewers were able to see Jamie on “America’s Got Talent” on Tuesday night, proudly supporting his wife while she bared her soul on stage.
The moment is one he’ll never forget, a reward for the months and years of anguish and the pain and sweat of recovery.
“It meant everything,” Jamie said. “We go through life a lot of times and we meet people, and I guess they say certain people are in your life for a reason and other people are for a season. And she’s surpassed anything I could’ve ever wanted for a girlfriend or wife or a significant other, and I just felt so blessed to be able to have her in my life and to be there to support me.
“... She stuck by my side. She stayed positive. She knew, like I knew, that one day I was gonna get better. I am gonna get better. And she loved me that much, and for that, there’s nothing that I wouldn’t do for her.”
This story was originally published June 30, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
